Last month I spoke at the second Singapore Facebook Developers Garage (organized by Entrepreneur 27 Singapore (e27) and the Singapore PHP Users Group) for a session: “Facebook Apps: Goldmine or Hype?”
It was certainly an interesting session, and if you know me, I certainly wouldn’t waste my time if it was “hype”…
More interestingly, I got a chance to meet up with a number of skilled PHP, Ruby-On-Rails and CakePHP programmers and a number of them are pretty skilled developers. Already a number of Singapore-developed applications are making their mark on the social networks, and it’ll be interesting to see what comes up next.
If you tried to access this blog over the weekend, you might’ve noticed that it was up and it went down at times. I’m glad to say that we’ve moved the blog from a shared hosting account to a dedicated server and for the most part the bugs have been ironed out. (barring some file permissions and folder permissions).
[Note: the “broken database” comments you see are part of some inherent bugs in the WordPress 2.3.X series, but the comments are still going through]
In addition, we’ve ported over a couple hundred megs of content and if there’re broken graphics or missing MP3s or videos, drop us a line at the contact form.
Here’s one blogging tip:
If I had to do it all over again, I would’ve put the blog in a /blog/ directory and have the index.html be a “directory” page.
Yes, you can do it with one of the WP plugins to have your “landing page” be a “page”, but it’s not the same thing…
Back on the blogging front…
There could be a number of major enhancements in store, though we’ll likely start at the end of tax season (it’s a scramble filing tax statements from multiple companies and checking for regulatory compliance).
But while our tech team doing planning for the year ahead…
Are there any “wishlist” items you might like to see on this blog?
What’ve you enjoyed reading?
What’s the single post or page you’ve found the most useful OR enjoyed OR both?
It’s always a pleasure talking to affiliate marketing veteran Rachel Honoway who’s one of the pioneers at affiliate marketing service agency Kowabunga (later acquired by Think Partnership), having started in 1997.
She’s not only friendly, but highly knowledgeable about prevailing issues in the affiliate marketplace.
However, you cut it and define it, there’re marketers out there who do their best to make use of Twitter, Squidoo, Hubpages, MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, Metacafe, Youtube, Revver, forums and other social networking site (of the “Web 2.0” ilk) to generate adsense or affiliate income.
Some of them are spectacularly successful, while others just flame up and die, and have their accounts deleted en-masse.
So is Web 2.0 a “dead” technology for marketers?
Are Web 2.0 site destined to become a dead graveyard populated by “internet polluters“?
I don’t think so.
This issue came up during the taping of a Friday Podcast session with Affiliate Classroom’s Marketing VP and affiliate marketing industry veteran Rachel Honoway.
I was pretty impressed that Web 2.0-based affiliates ranked alongside SEO, PPC, Coupon, shopping comparison and other types of profiled affiliates in Affiliate Classroom’s new AC Certified program for Affiliate Managers.
If you recall, Jim Kukral presented a session on “Bloggers as the Next Generation of Super Affiliates” at Affiliate Summit West 2007.
And it’s great to see these new generation of affiliate marketers being profiled in the new program, and even better, there’re tips for new and experienced affiliate managers to reach out to these marketers.
But back to “Web 2.0” for a second.
If you’ve been reading this blog over the last couple of weeks, you’d pick up the thread that this (more…)
One of my friends mentioned that he’s built a list of 10,000 opt-in members into his mailing list within a period of 7 days…so what’s he supposed to do now, he asks.
I don’t think any responsible email marketer will give advice before finding out more information.
For example, how was the list built? Using PPC? Expired domain traffic? Co-reg traffic? Via opt-ins through Squidoo or HubPages? Via an article directory? As a result of a follow up/update list after buying a product (either an affiliate product or your own product).
Each of these channels comes with it’s own level of permission – and if you’re a permission-based marketer, you’ll realized that someone who’s just bought something from you has a higher level of loyalty and stickiness, compared to someone who’s just downloaded a free report off your site.
So back to the 10,000 mailing list – determine the source of list/lead generation is important. Are they emotionally invested in you? Have they spent money purchasing something you offer? Called into one of your teleseminars and stayed the full duration because they found the information compelling? Are they merely curious strangers? Or evangelists for your brand (also known as “raving fans”).
Once you’ve sorted that out, you need to figure out the demographics of your list too. What’s their (more…)
