Yesterday we set two traffic records. WorldVitalRecords.com had more than 36,000 unique visitors--6,000 higher than our two previous best days, earlier in April. And We're Related on Facebook had more than 105,000 daily active users.

One of the best parts about being an internet entrepreneur is how immediately your actions translate into measureable results. Our team members are working hard on search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing campaigns, and improving our affiliate marketing program. As each channel improves, the overall cumulative results are exciting.

A fun and potentially rewarding web site for genealogists is being announced today. GenealogyPays.com features a trivia puzzle that someone will solve for a cash prize of up to $30,000. But in order to solve the puzzle, visitors will need to keep returning to the site to uncover new areas of the puzzle that have been purchased by advertisers.

So many genealogists have invested all their spare time and money on family history over the years. Now one of them gets a chance to win it all back!

If you search for "family link" or "familylink" on Google, the first hit is not www.familylink.com. Today, on the query "familylink", hits #5, 7, 8, 9, and 10 all refer to FamilyLink.com, but they are from blogs and press releases. Google is not yet ranking FamilyLink.com as the most relevant result for these queries.

I'm a huge fan of Quantcast. I've blogged before that it may be the best free tool for online marketers.

And now it's even better.

Two weeks someone showed me that whenever you are looking at a web site, to see how much traffic it has, that there are two arrows that PREVIOUS and NEXT, so if you are looking at the 100th most popular web site, you can click on NEXT and see the 101st most popular.

Every Friday an energetic group of internet entrepreneurs and marketers meets at the Provo Labs Academy at 12:30 for a 60-90 minute run down of the hottest online business news of the week.

Some weeks we are blown away by the exciting announcements and new launches of venture-backed startup companies or the mind-blowing techtonic plate-shifting announcements that come from the major players in the industry, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, AOL and IAC.

The blogosphere is going nuts over the possibility that Google will be providing monthly query volume by keyword. This is something that Goto.com/Overture/Yahoo Search Marketing has provided for years, but inventory.overture.com has been unreliable for some time. And Yahoo only has a minority of the overall search traffic.

For many years I have wanted Ancestry.com to go international, since the world population is more than 20 times larger than the U.S. population. I felt that a Rootsweb-type model could be done in virtually every country of the world, followed at sime time, by an Ancestry-type subscription model. The one (a user generated content model) would lead to the other (a premium database model.)

Note: I left the company in February 2002 and have no inside information about the company or its plans.

Yesterday I met with about a dozen entrepreneurs who came to the Provo Labs Academy to learn about the 12-Week Crash Course in Internet Marketing that starts next Thursday, March 15th at 5 pm.

An email will be going out to about 1,000 Utah entrepreneurs early next week, as well as a few additional marketing efforts. We have room for at least 10 more people to sign up for the class, but space is limited, so sign up today at www.provolabs.com/academy/

In December a panel of internet entrepreneurs shared their stories and their keys to success with my BYU marketing and Provo Labs Academy students.

One young woman told how she had teamed up a few years ago with her brother to start an ecommerce site, selling a very unusual niche product. They did almost $1 million in revenue last year.

One student asked her how long it took for her sales to take off initially. Her answer surprised me: she worked for an entire week before she had her first sale.

Some people are born with great names and others have great names thrust upon them. In the 1960s when I was given the name "Paul Allen" it was an ordinary name. But thanks to the dynamic duo of Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the name is now famous.

But what do you do if you want to be found online, but you can't possibly stand out like the rich and famous person with the same name? Or what do you do if you have a name like "John Smith" that is so common that it can't possibly stand out?