Category Archives: Internet Marketing

Your Outsourcing Dream Answered: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Service

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Josh Wexelbaum over at ScrappyBusiness Idea Blog mentioned this new service in a recent post “Amazon Mechanical Turk for Fun and Profit” and Internet Marketers can rejoice as some of their outsourcing woes are answered.

Besides your finances, the other major constraint for any Internet marketer is time – there’re only 24 hours in a day.

And Amazon’s new outsourced service boasts a few interesting innovations…

amazon mechanical turk

Amazon’s Turk moniker comes from the “Turk” chess playing machine which toured 18th Century Europe, seemingly beating chess players. It was later revealed that a human player hide within the contraption. (Maybe a clever “ghost in the machine” or Ex Deus Machina jibe might be apt…).

So how does the Mechanical Turk differ from the other freelancer services like elance, rentacoder, workaholics et al.

The rates seem Continue reading →

Monday Question: Is Web Advertising The Easiest Path To Internet Income?

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This week’s Monday Question comes from Simon:

“I see several options to run web advertising on my websites, and it looks very easy compared to affiliate marketing. Wouldn’t it be easier to make money this way?”

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That’s a good question.

Your internet income is determined by your effort.

The level of engagement (the time and effort you put into your marketing efforts) generally determines the type of return you get.

Here’s a listing of different monetization techniques with payouts listed from lower returns to higher returns:

Web advertising -> CPA (cost per action) marketing -> pay per sale (or what’s traditionally known as affiliate marketing) -> product creation

Web advertising refers to programs like the Google AdSense publisher program, Yahoo Search Marketing ads, WidgetBucks or programs like Chitika and Kontera.

I’ve found that web advertising generally Continue reading →

Monday Question: Pay-Per-Click vs Blogging vs Free Traffic face-off

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Mark asked “I have been reading your blog for awhile, and everything I have seen you do has revolved around blogging and free traffic. Have you had success with this program, and/or with PPC in general recently? I am just a bit surprised to see you promoting this offer since I haven’t read about you doing things with PPC before.”

Here’s my response to this Monday Question:



Monday Question - PPC Vs Blogging And Free Traffic - The best bloopers are a click away

While blogging and free traffic continue to generate 90-95% of the traffic (with SEO traffic making up the balance), like any business owner, I’m looking at ways to grow my business and increase sales and profits.

PPC is certainly a good prospect, which is why I’m promoting PPC Classroom. It comes from 2 credible Internet marketers, Jeremy Palmer and Anik Singal, and I’ve had a chance to take a look at the product. The next phase is Continue reading →

When’s The Internet Going From 2.0 To 2-Way Media?

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Here’s an interesting item from WebProNews, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince (or is it Prince now that the copyright hold on his name has been dropped…) is trying to take action against the big kahuna of file sharing Bittorrent sites – The Pirate Bay, Youtube and eBay over alleged copyright infringement of his name and intellectual property.

Somewhat ironic considering he had a promo with a British Sunday newspaper to give away copies of his “Planet Earth” CD free with a particular edition.

Already the Prince video clips are going up faster than older ones are being taken down at Youtube. Is this really a battle worth fighting for?

When products were physical – in the form of a CD, DVD, book, manual – it was easier to maintain copyright. When Prince distributes his CD free with the UK paper, were the CDs imprinted with “Promotional CD – Not for Sale”? Did they say “Resale Rights granted”?

And if you give away media and content free in one channel, how do you enforce pricing in another channel, whether it’s a iTunes store or in a CD store?

The moment something can be digitized, whether it’s an MP3, PDF, DOC, JPG or other digital media file, you can have legislature like the DMCA (digital millenium copyright act) and DRM (digital rights management) infrastructure in place. You can even password protect your files, but eventually these protective measures will be overcome.

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Don’t get me wrong, because Continue reading →

Customer Relationship Management = Huge Long Tail Profits?

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You’ll often hear that “the money is in the list”, but a more important dimension to look at is the type of relationship you have with your list. It’s not just a quantity (ie numbers) game, the quality (relationship) game is more important.

I have a number of banking accounts and financial trading account. It’s always an interesting exercise to see what happens in September.

I got a package from Citibank, which included the following:

citibank

Blue Magnolia’s one of the premiere bakeries in Singapore and to have the bank buy me a cake on my birthday gives an indication of their priority in building a relationsip. I also got a greeting card from one of my stock brokers.

Any word from my Standard Chartered Bank banker? Or the other Continue reading →

Rabid Niche Marketing With Britney Spears

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Dear Fellow Niche Marketer,
Like me, you probably have heard of the buzz surrounding Britney Spears’ performance on the MTV Video Music Awards.
You would have heard the critics’ criticism that she looked like she had piled on a couple of pounds, and her outfit looked something reminiscent of what a working lady might wear walking the streets.

britney spears

Additionally, you might also have read about how she was huffing and puffing Continue reading →