Making Money Online Forum

Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

If your business doesn’t connect with your customers, individually and as a community, demanding customers will not only ignore you, but will actively keep other customers away. According to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte Development, one third of all online communities now launched by businesses fail to engage even a hundred participants.

A new book by David L. Rogers, titled The Network is Your Customer, elaborates on this paradigm shift, and outlines the following five key strategies to thrive in this digital age, prioritized from the most basic to the most complex in value to the customer:

1. Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.

2. Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.

3. Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.

4. Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.

5. Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

• Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.

• Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.

• Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

This book outlines a good process for planning and implementing a customer network strategy to match your customers, your business, and your objectives – whether you need to drive sales, reduce costs, gain customer insight, or build breakthrough products and services.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

Marty Zwilling

Politico said he wasn’t, now Fox News (and Frum Forum) say he is. To help you process this news, read Ed’s post from this morning about Obama potentially spending a cool billion on the 2012 campaign and then have a look at Jay Cost’s graph of Republican fundraising over the last four cycles. Said Cost, believing that Steele was set to bow out, “In the end, this is what did Michael Steele in. He could not raise the money, and that just will not do moving forward.”

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

So that explains why he didn’t show up at the RNC chair debate: He was lying low, cagily making it look like he wouldn’t run again so that, er … more contenders would jump into the race. Frum Forum’s whip count puts him at around 45-60 votes in the first round of balloting, with 85 needed to win; several of his former aides and allies (Reince Priebus, Gentry Collins, etc) are in the race as challengers, so a key question will be what happens to their supporters if/when they’re eliminated in the first few rounds. Are those supporters so disgruntled with Steele that they’ll gravitate to a consensus alternative, like Saul Anuzis? Or are they actually clubby RNC insiders who prefer Priebus and Collins to Steele but will resort to the chairman as a next best option if their preference is eliminated? Or will some outsider with fundraising appeal, like Norm Coleman, sweep in to provide yet another alternative?

There are only two reasons to conceivably back Steele, as I see it. One: The GOP did, after all, win 63 seats on his watch, and he’s been lying low enough over the last few months that at least it looks like the gaffe-o-rama phase of his chairmanship is finally over. All of which is well and good, but in that case I urge you to follow the link up top and eyeball Cost’s graph again. The question isn’t whether the GOP did well this year, it’s whether it could have done better if the RNC had been flush with cash. Gentry Collins argued that poor fundraising might have cost Republicans an extra two dozen House seats, but given that he’s now challenging Steele for the chairman’s position, take that estimate for what it’s worth. Two: If you believe that, in an age of online donations and targeted giving to campaigns, the RNC will never again be relevant the way it once was, then maybe it’s better to keep Steele in place. It’ll avoid a nasty public squabble between pro-Steele factions, led by Palin, and anti-Steele factions like the “Bush establishment,” and it’ll spare us the spectacle of Steele doing interviews to dump on the GOP after he loses. Plus, if Steele’s reelected, Republican outside groups are bound to start planning way ahead to pick up the slack in case the RNC can’t get its act together to fulfill its traditional fundraising and GOTV roles. No one cares about the RNC as an organization, only that its functions are being done and done well by some conservative outfit. If Steele’s reelected, it means that some other outfit or outfits will be pressured to step up. Inconvenient, but not fatal. I think.

robert shumake

Social <b>News</b> Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL <b>News</b>

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake detroit

Social <b>News</b> Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL <b>News</b>

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

If your business doesn’t connect with your customers, individually and as a community, demanding customers will not only ignore you, but will actively keep other customers away. According to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte Development, one third of all online communities now launched by businesses fail to engage even a hundred participants.

A new book by David L. Rogers, titled The Network is Your Customer, elaborates on this paradigm shift, and outlines the following five key strategies to thrive in this digital age, prioritized from the most basic to the most complex in value to the customer:

1. Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.

2. Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.

3. Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.

4. Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.

5. Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

• Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.

• Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.

• Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

This book outlines a good process for planning and implementing a customer network strategy to match your customers, your business, and your objectives – whether you need to drive sales, reduce costs, gain customer insight, or build breakthrough products and services.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

Marty Zwilling

Politico said he wasn’t, now Fox News (and Frum Forum) say he is. To help you process this news, read Ed’s post from this morning about Obama potentially spending a cool billion on the 2012 campaign and then have a look at Jay Cost’s graph of Republican fundraising over the last four cycles. Said Cost, believing that Steele was set to bow out, “In the end, this is what did Michael Steele in. He could not raise the money, and that just will not do moving forward.”

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

So that explains why he didn’t show up at the RNC chair debate: He was lying low, cagily making it look like he wouldn’t run again so that, er … more contenders would jump into the race. Frum Forum’s whip count puts him at around 45-60 votes in the first round of balloting, with 85 needed to win; several of his former aides and allies (Reince Priebus, Gentry Collins, etc) are in the race as challengers, so a key question will be what happens to their supporters if/when they’re eliminated in the first few rounds. Are those supporters so disgruntled with Steele that they’ll gravitate to a consensus alternative, like Saul Anuzis? Or are they actually clubby RNC insiders who prefer Priebus and Collins to Steele but will resort to the chairman as a next best option if their preference is eliminated? Or will some outsider with fundraising appeal, like Norm Coleman, sweep in to provide yet another alternative?

There are only two reasons to conceivably back Steele, as I see it. One: The GOP did, after all, win 63 seats on his watch, and he’s been lying low enough over the last few months that at least it looks like the gaffe-o-rama phase of his chairmanship is finally over. All of which is well and good, but in that case I urge you to follow the link up top and eyeball Cost’s graph again. The question isn’t whether the GOP did well this year, it’s whether it could have done better if the RNC had been flush with cash. Gentry Collins argued that poor fundraising might have cost Republicans an extra two dozen House seats, but given that he’s now challenging Steele for the chairman’s position, take that estimate for what it’s worth. Two: If you believe that, in an age of online donations and targeted giving to campaigns, the RNC will never again be relevant the way it once was, then maybe it’s better to keep Steele in place. It’ll avoid a nasty public squabble between pro-Steele factions, led by Palin, and anti-Steele factions like the “Bush establishment,” and it’ll spare us the spectacle of Steele doing interviews to dump on the GOP after he loses. Plus, if Steele’s reelected, Republican outside groups are bound to start planning way ahead to pick up the slack in case the RNC can’t get its act together to fulfill its traditional fundraising and GOTV roles. No one cares about the RNC as an organization, only that its functions are being done and done well by some conservative outfit. If Steele’s reelected, it means that some other outfit or outfits will be pressured to step up. Inconvenient, but not fatal. I think.

robert shumake

robert shumake

Social <b>News</b> Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL <b>News</b>

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

Social <b>News</b> Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL <b>News</b>

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

One of the lesser known money-makers uses an idea called Pay-Per-Click Websites (or, more simply, PPC sites). A PPC site is a search engine, much like Google or Yahoo!, which rank websites based on the search terms you enter. Using a membership subscription process, you can be paid for using them. The idea behind these websites is to promote their search engine to potential advertisers, so that they can make money. Because of the prevalence of Google, Yahoo!, and ask.com, the lesser known sites have to offer incentives to people who use their service so that they can compete. Their method is to pay users, often at about one-thousandth of a cent per click, to browse on their site, eventually paying the customer when their balance reaches between $5 and $50, depending on the site. As I'm sure you can imagine, this takes a long time to build up, but once you automate your clicking, you can eventually work up a large sum of money and get a pretty big check. It can take awhile, but can be worth it if you spend a lot of time on the net already. The site you want to sign up with is PPC Appraisal (you can find all the necessary links at the bottom of this article)..

Simply sign up for a new account. When the site asks for your company, simply put your full name. For your tax ID, put 'n/a' and for your website, put 'www.ppcappraisal.com'. Sign up for any account name you please.

The next step is to download and install an automatic clicker. The only approved choice by PPC appraisal is the Ougo browser (), and fortunately, it happens to be one of the better ones out there. .

Now you need to do some initial setup. You only need to do this next part once. After you log in to PPC Appraisal's website, you need to click on the requests tab. Check the following boxes: Baltimore, Braintopia, Campaign, Cialto Art, Cockta, Cymicon, Joymars, Kazati.com portal, kili gaga, Medical health and fitness, NetVivid Portal and PPC Search engine. Do not select any others, or else it will take you years to get a check. Click the request bottom at the bottom of this page to continue.

Once you've made your requests, go to the "Menu" tab and find "Your link to rotation script for portals." Highlight the link inside this box, and press CTRL+C to copy.

Now it's time to set up the browser. Install the Ougo Browser you downloaded earlier and go to the "Surf" Menu, then click on Setup. Under Set1, paste (CTRL+V) the link into the panel on the right. That's all for setup.

To start the process, you need to start up the Ougo Browser whenever you go online. To start auto-surfing, and of course, making money, you simply go to "Surf" then "Start Surf" then "OK" when a pop up starts. You'll quickly see two windows pop up.

This is fine, but to maximize your options, go to "Tools -> Developers ->Analyst -> Six" to open six windows, and triple your browsing powers. Now let the money roll in, albeit slowly.

To get paid, you need to simply wait until you have enough credits with these websites. To check your current status, go to the PPC Appraisal website and sign in. One option you probably want to turn on in Ougo is to send the browser to the tray when you click the minimize button. To do this, click Tools -> Ougo Browser -> Options -> Tray Options -> Enable Tray Icon ->Minimize to Tray. Now when you click the minimize button, it will not appear next to the other programs you're using, but rather disappear down by the clock on the right-hand side of the screen. It will continue running, but you just won't be able to see it.

Now, this alone will NOT make you any money whatsoever. It could take you months to earn enough for a single check, but you'd be losing money on electricity the whole time. You need to take you clicking business to the next step, or don't bother. The way you do this is simple. You get referrals. You'll need a lot of them to make it work, but if you get one or two really intrepid adventurers, you can get up to $4 a day with minimal effort. You earn 5% of what each of your referrals makes by clicking, and 5% of their referrals down to the fourth level (i.e. you -> your referral -> their referral -> their referral). It can add up nicely if you do it right. Currently, I'm making about $3 a day with four referral levels. Write up a set of instructions similar to this one (sorry, you can't copy this document outright), and post it in your blog, or on message boards, changing out my referral addresses with yours, and there's some money to be made here. Keep clicking yourself so that you receive checks, otherwise that referral money will simply sit in your account. If you have an alternate address, like a P.O. Box or an office address, you can use those too. Refer yourself to yourself! Not a bad idea if you ask me. Refer everyone else from your second level account, and you instantly get twice the bonus on any future referrals.

You can also sell this document on eBay or other Auction sites, as people are always looking to get some more income streams. It's hard work to do this, but once you get yourself established, all you need to do is request money once a week from each of your PPC sites.

Are there any dangers to doing this? No. It's completely legal, spyware free, and does very, very little to slow down your PC while it is running.

You should also know that a document has been going around the internet for a while now, very similar to this one, advertising the same site, though promising a lot larger gains in money than are possible, and giving out bad advice on how to get started. You'll find a lot of information online about how this is a scam, etc. It is not. I've been paid, multiple times already, and am on the verge of getting paid again. The trick is to use the method I describe, that is, not clicking on all the possible membership requests. As I stated in that section, this is a sure way to make no money whatsoever, as different sites pay different rates. The sites I've chosen for you to participate in have the best payrates, and thus, you're not wasting any time waiting for the slow sites to give you some money. Only the fast paying ones will be clicked through. Also make sure that you use Ougo Browser rather than Test33.

For example, I started off finding out about this method through that bad document, and clicked on request all. By doing this, I earned five cents from the highest pay-rate site in a week's time. I knew something was wrong. So I singled out that site for the next week, and low and behold, I got $2.92 in a week instead. As you can see, this is not the biggest money earner ever. However, I kept my PC auto-clicking for a while longer, and eventually got a $50 check in the mail for my troubles. Most of the time, I was using my computer for other purposes while it was clicking away, so I wasn't losing out on anything while it was running.
The reason you're doing all of this for credits is simple: a credit is a unit created by the search engines you're participating in by clicking on them. The way you make money is to make a batch request for your credits, and then to sell them on a site like De Quba . To sell your credits, use PPC Appraisal's Transfer option to transfer your banked credits away from PPC to your DeQuba Account.

To sell your DeQuba credits, you must become a platinum member - which means it's $36 for a year-long membership, and you won't make any sales in the first 60 days. I suggest banking your credits on PPC Appraisal, then after you've requested some, sign up for the Platinum Membership. You'll get a bunch of free credits immediately, just leave these as they are. After your 60 day "fraud protection" time is over, you transfer all of your credits from PPC Appraisal, and sell them in the DeQuba Forum (go to "sell your credits"). Find either a one-time sale (recommended), or a monthly sale (only do these if you are positive you can create a high enough balance). You will be paid by these people. Although this option now becomes a paid program, you make roughly $1 per credit, and since the minimum balance for cashing in credits requires you to have 50 or 60, you make your money back, and more, with your first transaction.

After publicizing the proper methods to everyone I could, I got plenty of referrals, and made some nice money. I opened up my requirements to all the sites listed above, and now get a bevy of checks every six months or so. Referrals help immensely, of course, but the money is still earnable, and it's not a scam.

Good luck!



robert shumake

Social <b>News</b> Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL <b>News</b>

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake

robert shumake detroit

Every startup needs to understand that the customer paradigm has dramatically shifted over the past two years with pervasive social networks and smartphones. The customer base is no longer a mass audience that can be driven by mass media, but a dynamic network of individual customers who interact with each other, and expect to interact with you as a business.

If your business doesn’t connect with your customers, individually and as a community, demanding customers will not only ignore you, but will actively keep other customers away. According to the 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte Development, one third of all online communities now launched by businesses fail to engage even a hundred participants.

A new book by David L. Rogers, titled The Network is Your Customer, elaborates on this paradigm shift, and outlines the following five key strategies to thrive in this digital age, prioritized from the most basic to the most complex in value to the customer:

1. Access to your business from the relevant network of customers. Every organization today faces the expectations of an always-on world. To compete, startups must find ways to provide customers an easier, faster, more pervasive connection to digital networks, via mobile as well as the Internet.

2. Engage customers with relevant and valuable content. In an environment of media overload and rampant ad-skipping, startups that want to engage customer networks need to create content that customers actually want to consume. Funny videos and worthless give-aways won’t make your website go “viral” these days.

3. Customize your interactions to meet unique customer needs. You need to give customers the tools to customize products, services, and content to suit their needs and interests, to engage them more deeply, add value, and differentiate your offering from competitors.

4. Connect to the customer in your communication. Join in conversations with customers who are already shaping brand perception and sharing their ideas and opinions on the Web. Conversations may be on existing social media, or on your own brand forum established specifically for this purpose.

5. Collaborate with customers on shared goals. One of the most powerful ways to engage customer networks is to invite them to collaborate with your startup on shared goals and projects. This requires the right balance of motivators (love, glory, and money), and the right balance of bottoms-up versus top-down control.

Many businesses that seem to understand the new paradigm still fall for some common mistakes, like the following, that can blunt the effectiveness of their efforts:

• Infatuation with technology. Founders too often see a list of the latest hot tools, and go after them, without first making the proper analysis and connect to relevant customers. The best tools, if not relevant or used incorrectly, can’t save you.

• Lack of customer insight. Startups launch plans without taking the time to understand the networked behavior of their customers, or the drivers for that behavior.

• Lack of clear objectives. Without a clear scope and vision, efforts become unfocused, lack impact, and are impossible to measure. Everyone on the team has to be involved and on board, or the efforts will be fragmented.

This book outlines a good process for planning and implementing a customer network strategy to match your customers, your business, and your objectives – whether you need to drive sales, reduce costs, gain customer insight, or build breakthrough products and services.

The bottom line is that today, whatever your goals and whatever your business, the network is your customer. Connect to it and win customers.

Marty Zwilling

Politico said he wasn’t, now Fox News (and Frum Forum) say he is. To help you process this news, read Ed’s post from this morning about Obama potentially spending a cool billion on the 2012 campaign and then have a look at Jay Cost’s graph of Republican fundraising over the last four cycles. Said Cost, believing that Steele was set to bow out, “In the end, this is what did Michael Steele in. He could not raise the money, and that just will not do moving forward.”

Or will it?

Ending weeks of rumors that he would not seek a second term, Steele plans to throw his hat into the ring during a conference call with RNC members at 7:30 p.m. ET, the sources said. Steele is said to be amused by false reports of his retirement and intentionally kept his plans secret for the last month in order to flush out competitors for the post, Fox has learned.

During Steele’s tenure, Republicans picked up 63 House seats in last month’s elections, the biggest gain in more than seven decades. But Steele has been dogged by criticism from some Republicans who see him as prone to missteps.

Criticism of Steele has helped lead to a crowded field of challengers seeking to head the RNC. Among those who have officially announced they are in the race are Saul Anuzis, a committee member from Michigan who ran and lost to Steele in 2009, and Reince Priebus of Wisconsin, a former member of Steele’s inner circle, along with former Luxembourg Ambassador Anne Wagner.

So that explains why he didn’t show up at the RNC chair debate: He was lying low, cagily making it look like he wouldn’t run again so that, er … more contenders would jump into the race. Frum Forum’s whip count puts him at around 45-60 votes in the first round of balloting, with 85 needed to win; several of his former aides and allies (Reince Priebus, Gentry Collins, etc) are in the race as challengers, so a key question will be what happens to their supporters if/when they’re eliminated in the first few rounds. Are those supporters so disgruntled with Steele that they’ll gravitate to a consensus alternative, like Saul Anuzis? Or are they actually clubby RNC insiders who prefer Priebus and Collins to Steele but will resort to the chairman as a next best option if their preference is eliminated? Or will some outsider with fundraising appeal, like Norm Coleman, sweep in to provide yet another alternative?

There are only two reasons to conceivably back Steele, as I see it. One: The GOP did, after all, win 63 seats on his watch, and he’s been lying low enough over the last few months that at least it looks like the gaffe-o-rama phase of his chairmanship is finally over. All of which is well and good, but in that case I urge you to follow the link up top and eyeball Cost’s graph again. The question isn’t whether the GOP did well this year, it’s whether it could have done better if the RNC had been flush with cash. Gentry Collins argued that poor fundraising might have cost Republicans an extra two dozen House seats, but given that he’s now challenging Steele for the chairman’s position, take that estimate for what it’s worth. Two: If you believe that, in an age of online donations and targeted giving to campaigns, the RNC will never again be relevant the way it once was, then maybe it’s better to keep Steele in place. It’ll avoid a nasty public squabble between pro-Steele factions, led by Palin, and anti-Steele factions like the “Bush establishment,” and it’ll spare us the spectacle of Steele doing interviews to dump on the GOP after he loses. Plus, if Steele’s reelected, Republican outside groups are bound to start planning way ahead to pick up the slack in case the RNC can’t get its act together to fulfill its traditional fundraising and GOTV roles. No one cares about the RNC as an organization, only that its functions are being done and done well by some conservative outfit. If Steele’s reelected, it means that some other outfit or outfits will be pressured to step up. Inconvenient, but not fatal. I think.

robert shumake detroit

Social <b>News</b> Site Reddit Reports 200%+ Growth in 2010

Social news site Reddit posted year-end numbers this afternoon including January and December page view stats that climbed from 250 million pageviews to more than 3X that number, ...

Opinion: Can Oprah Help Restore Civility? - AOL <b>News</b>

Oprah began her new cable television network -- OWN -- at noon on New Year's Day, a network dedicated to the total and complete absence of mean-spiritedness.

New Edition of Huckleberry Finn to Drop N-Word: Instant Reactions

Auburn University professor Alan Gribben, along with NewSouth Books, plans to release a newly edited edition of the Mark Twain classic, with every instance of the N-word replaced with the word.

robert shumake detroit

robert shumake detroit