Archive of ‘Internet Marketing’ category
At this time of the year with Christmas and New Year’s reducing the number of official work days in December, has your productivity been affected? Especially for those of us who are tethered to our computers, either because we’re:
- Working
- Hosting/calling in to a conference call
- Playing games
- Watching a movie
- Going through our business balance sheets
- Coordinating with our remote operations team
Or some other activity of your own choosing, I have found that I spend about 1.5 to twice as much time in front of my computer as I spend sleeping on my bed every day.
So do the holidays represent a boon or bane to the internet marketing continually building their business (especially during the holiday shopping season).
Specifically, Do the holidays disrupt your business momentum and do either you and/or your business suffer as a result?
With the 24×7 nature of the internet, it’s inevitable that there’ll be a number of casualties (direct or indirect) are suffered along the rush to be the first and #1, especially in a high stakes game where “Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.”
In the words of TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington: “I haven’t died yet,†although he’s (more…)
One of the keenest observations I’d heard from Sam Harrelson from an older episode of Geekcast is when he was in the process of adding Twitter to an affiliate network’s communication channels, some of the affiliate managers were happy that they had another channel to send out new offer information to.
If you’re an affiliate signed up to multiple networks, you’d receive a constant barrage of daily emails with subject lines like “network exclusives, promote now!”, “Highest payouts!” and “Hot new offers”.
Likewise, I’ve checked out a couple of affiliate marketing forums where networks have sponsored sections of the forums and populated these sections with “These offers are hot!” then proceed to list down payouts and offer caps.
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I don’t know how you feel, but this is pretty much tantamount to email and social network spamming by overzealous affiliate managers.
A good affiliate manager should know when to promote offers and when to back off. And emailing/hounding me when I say I’m busy is one way to get on my really bad side.
The other thing that’s disturbing is (more…)
One of the best aspects of having a regular podcast like the Friday Podcast is being able to tap the brains and get ideas and inspiration for some of the brightest lights in blogging, affiliate marketing, PPC and search engine optimization.
And the inertia of business and projects has kept my intended blogroll update moving forward for a couple of months (yes, months).
If you’re headed to the Affiliate Summit next month, do drop a note in the comments below and be sure to say “hi” especially if we meet up at one of the parties or at the booths.
Here’re some of my old friends and new friends I’ve made in the last year (and recently added to the blogroll).
Miles Baker: A work-at-home dad who’s tried just about everything on the internet, Miles is a successful affiliate who’s built a healthy number of profitable sites. He’s one of the panelists at the affiliate panel on the first day of the Affiliate Summit.
Check out Miles’ appearance on my Friday Podcast.
Miles’ Twitter account
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NickyCakes: Nick calls himself a “reformed blackhat” whose main focus is on pay per click-based affiliate marketing. He’s posted a number of innovative affiliate strategies on his blog (in between pointing out perceived pretentiousness among certain affiliates). Nick will also be one of the panelists on the affiliate panel at 1230pm on the first day of the summit.
Nick’s previous appearance on the Friday Podcast.
Nick’s Twitter account
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Geordie Carswell: Geordie’s the 3rd and final member of the affiliate panel. Though he doesn’t actively blog, he’s focused on building his new outfit, Diversion Marketing. Although he’s quite accomplished at PPC, he’s since started work on a couple of different projects and I might have him on a future episode of the Friday Podcast.
In the meantime, you can check out his previous appearance on the Friday Podcast where he talked about affiliate success strategies.
Geordie’s twitter account
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Chad Frederiksen: Better known as “CDF Networks”, Chad has the distinction of being one of the top 10 (more…)
You’re probably already familiar with the old phishing scams where someone has passed away/fled a third world country/discovered some long-forgotten funds and needs your “help” to wire the money. For just a small “administrative” fee, the person will share the $15 million amount with you.
Though this online fraud has been exposed some time ago, people are still falling for it.
The latest scam has an interesting twist.
Here’s an email I received:
Dear User,
We recently noticed that a transaction may have been made without your
knowledge or consent. We are currently investigating the following
transaction:
-----------------------------------
Details of Disputed Transaction
-----------------------------------
Seller's name: Hagio-Host
Seller's email: yawvaar@gmail.com
Seller's transaction ID: 7YW39066PT6017814
Transaction date: Nov 25, 2008
Transaction amount: -$80.94 USD
Your transaction ID: 30L88064FF065545B
Case number: PP-587-442-704
To see the details of this case, log in to your PayPal account by following the link below and go to
the Resolution Center.
https://www.paypal[dot]com/login?secure=ssl32?caseid=7YW39066PT6017814?=disputeTRANSACTION
The seller has been asked to provide information about this transaction.
During this time the funds are not available in your account, but if the
unauthorized activity claim is decided in your favor, we will fully refund
you for the amount of the transaction.
Sincerely,
Account Review Department
Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you
will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.
BC:PP-587-442-704:R1:USD80.94:11/25/2008:30L88064FF065545B
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This looks pretty legitimate, however, checking on the hyperlinked address to “fix” this problem, it goes to “http://paypal.update-user-info[dot]com/index.htm”
Which is obviously intended to harvest your paypal login and password.
They probably won’t catch too many people with this trick, but still it pays to be careful.
Always check the originating domain and you’re unsure, go to the Paypal website and drop them an email.
While some marketers are turning to games like Gears of War 2, the new expansion to the World of Warcraft mmpog or Red Alert 3 as a diversion from working on their marketing campaigns all day, it might be a little too easy to overlook the immense profits present within the niche.
A recent CNN report profiled Steve Demeter, creator of Trism, a game for the Apple iPhone. Priced at about $5 per download, the game which is similar to bejewelled, has generated $250,000 in profits in its first 2 months, giving aspiring game developers an easy distribution channel through the iPhone and the app store.
Likewise, TechCrunch recently reported that PlaySpan which deals with virtual currency for online games has raised $16.8 million (more…)
Affiliate network Market Leverage marketing manager Dina Riccobono invited me to come on their weekly video cast on Market Leverage TV last week to chat about blogging strategies and the panel I’ll be taking part in at Affiliate Summit West.
Here’s the episode of Market Leverage TV (3rd Nov 2008):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZTMddmvDk[/youtube]
Dina and I had an extended discussion on internet marketing strategies, including projects I’m working on:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCp123sdvHo[/youtube]
You can check out:
