I'm Porter

I’m done.

Today, I noticed Porter.im was available and knew the time had come for a vanity domain where I can post my badly structured arguments and observations on the world (as well as the Internet Marketing community).

It’s more important than that though – attached to your name is your reputation. And a brand is only as good as it’s reputation.

A good brand is a license to print money. Take for example the band KISS – they’ve sold 80 million records world wide but the most substantial part of the bands income is from merchandise. The strong KISS brands gives them ability to sell things no one would otherwise buy simply because the brand has positive emotional associations for the fans. Some of the more weird things include KISS Puzzle cubes, KISS Lyrca Shorts, KISS ‘Gene Simmons’ Apron and, my personal favorite; KISS Condoms aptly named ‘Rock ‘N Rubber’.

Gene Simmons reports to be worth over $150 million dollars now and no doubt will be buried a very rich man in his KISS coffin.

Your reputation online is as, if not more, important as it is offline. Anyone can Google your name, check you out on facebook, spy in on your Twitter feed and get a feel for a) what they think of you and b) what others think of you. I recommend protecting your brand in the search engine results. What comes up if you Google your name?

This is all leading to a small plug for a service that is yet to exist but soon we’ll be launching a new service called ‘repfence’. An online reputation managment solution for pro-actively protecting your good name and a reactive solution for when things have already turned ugly.