Joel Comm

Joel Comm (born May 5, 1964) is an American author and Internet marketer. In 2006, he published The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You about Making Money with AdSense, which was a New York Times and Business Week bestseller. He is also the author of Click Here to Order: Stories of the World’s Most Successful Internet Entrepreneurs and Twitter Power: How to Dominate your Market One Tweet at a Time. In 2007, he was the host and Executive Producer of The Next Internet Millionaire, an online reality show. In 2008, his company, Infomedia, produced an iPhone application: iFart.

§Business ventures

In 1996, Comm relaunched SpringerSpan.com as ClassicGames.com. Yahoo! bought out Comm and his partner, Eron Jokipii (who became Yahoo’s Chief of Games), integrating the service into its own platform.

Comm maintains WorldVillage.com, a content-based website which began as a printed newsletter called The Dallas Fort Worth Software Review. The site offers blog content, reviews and news on a range of different subjects.

Comm also runs a small software company, Infomedia. At the end of 2008, the company released iFart Mobile, an iPhone application that replicates the sound of bodily functions. The app spent three weeks at the top of iPhone’s application charts.

§Books

In 2004, Comm began using Google’s AdSense advertising program on his network of websites. He tested different approaches, producing a number of strategies that increased his advertising income. In 2005, he published an ebook entitled What Google Never Told You About Making Money With AdSense. The following year he published The AdSense Code, a traditional print book published by Morgan James Publishing. The AdSense Code reached third place on Amazon.com’s bestsellers, #6 on The New York Times Business Paperback bestsellers list and #8 on BusinessWeek’s Business Paperback bestsellers list.

In February 2009, Comm wrote Twitter Power a guide to Twitter, a popular microblogging service. The book has been translated into Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. An updated revised edition, Twitter Power 2.0, was released in paperback form in May 2010.

In June 2010, Comm wrote KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays. The book proposed and explained how to generate a part-time or full-time income by creating content-based websites monetized in a number of ways. Comm successfully marketed the book through online channels, but a December 2010 Huffington Post article demonstrated marketing books via television commercials was a waste of money.

§Celebrity

Following the publication of The AdSense Code Comm started to work as a public speaker, addressing business, Internet marketing and entrepreneurial conferences, including work for Microsoft, IBM and other corporations. From 2006-2010, Comm was a speaker at events like Armand Morin’s Big Seminar, Kenneth A. McArthur's JV Alert Live, Chris Howard’s Wealth Symposiums, T. Harv Eker’s Never Work Again and Anthony Robbins’ Wealth Mastery.

In 2006, Comm created an online reality show based on The Apprentice. Hosted by Comm, The Next Internet Millionaire took twelve Internet marketing hopefuls and provided them with challenges eliminating contestants until just one remained. The winner received $25,000 and was offered a joint venture with Comm said to be worth a million dollars. The show was broadcast exclusively on the Internet and later printed to DVD.

In 2008, Comm started his own web TV show called "Joel Comm Live!," which he later changed to "The Joel Comm Show." A program which aired live each week over the Internet via UStream, Comm hosted the show with his company's Vice President of Ideas, Dan Nickerson, and featured interviews with celebrities and notable Internet entrepreneurs. The show's guests included Tony Little, Simon Leung, Mari Smith, Nathan Anderson, Jen Groover, Dave Taylor, Rob McNealy and Cameron Johnson. "The Joel Comm Show" now airs as a syndicated weekly podcast.

In 2009, Comm produced and hosted a 12-hour philanthropic "tweetathon". Combining live streaming-video with social media to raise funds for WaterIsLife.com, a 501-C3 serving clean water initiatives in Africa and India, special guests appearing on the tweetathon included MC Hammer, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, David H. Lawrence XVII, Wil Wheaton and Pete Cashmore.

Also in 2009, Comm released an iPhone application to support the release of his book, KaChing. Similar to Staples popular "Easy Button", the digital button app featured a dollar sign placed on a green background. When tapped, the app would play the ubiquitous cash-register "kaching" sound. When Apple's review team rejected the app citing "minimal user functionality", Comm took his appeal directly to Steve Jobs via a novel recorded video. Examining other apps with a similar amount of functionality already appearing in the app store, Comm illustrated the somewhat arbitrary approval process which developers were subject to and asked for more transparency and fairness. The app was approved less than one month later.

In 2013, Comm made an appearance as a special guest on The Travel Channel's Hotel Impossible. He was asked to help the Western Riviera Motel and the town of Grand Lake, CO develop a plan for marketing online.

§Lawsuit

In February 2009, Air-O-Matic, makers of Pull My Finger, an iPhone app that also makes flatulent sounds, threatened legal action against Infomedia claiming trademark infringement. Air-O-Matic claimed that Infomedia had used the phrase "pull my finger" in its marketing material and demanded $50,000 in compensation. Infomedia responded by filing a complaint for declaratory judgement in Colorado District Court. The case between the two fart-producing companies became a caused calamity and was even featured on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. In September 2009, the two companies went public with their settlement, a jointly produced iPhone application called 'Clear the Air.'

§Bibliography

• Internet Family Fun with Bonnie Bruno, No Starch Press (May, 1997) ISBN 1886411190
• The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense, Morgan James Publishing (1st 2006, 2nd 2010) ISBN 1933596708
• Click Here to Order: Stories of the World's Most Successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs, Morgan James Publishing (Aug, 2008) ISBN 1600371736
• Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time, John Wiley & Sons (1st 2009, 2nd 2010) ISBN 0470563362
• KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays, John Wiley & Sons (June 2010) ISBN 0470597674
• So What Do YOU Do? Discovering the Genius Next Door with One Simple Question, Morgan James Publishing (Oct, 2013) ISBN 1614488517
• So What Do YOU Do? Discovering the Genius Next Door with One Simple Question: Volume 2, Morgan James Publishing (Oct, 2014) ISBN 1630472514

§References