Category Archives: social traffic

An Inconvenient Truth About Social Media

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One of the strength and at the same time, weaknesses of social media is it’s social nature.

Because you are able to broadcast your message across multiple platforms and multiple social networks, you can reach a huge number of people in a very short time.

A recent incident (nowhere near conclusion now) bears this out.

Jim Kukral’s TwitterMeThis social adventure.

affiliate summit west

At the recent Affiliate Summit West in Vegas 2008: Andrew Wee, Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral, Sam Harrelson, Zac Johnson

About a week ago, Jim published a blog post “Twitter Marketing Experiment – TwitterMeThis” where he’s pay $5 to the winner of a trivia game played on the Twitter micro-blogging (similar to SMS text messages) platform.

Shortly after, the topic was discussed on Geekcast, Jim posts a follow up about “social media being bullshit” and Sam posted a response and Shawn follows up with a sequence of 3 posts: one, two and three. In between there’s a discussion on TrishaLyn’s blog that Jim might not continue with the Geekcasts.

But I’m not so keen to talk about the  discussion as to look at how it took place.

Far beyond a one-to-one email exchange, the issue has escalated to the point of seeming disagreement and the potential departure of Jim from the Geekcast team.

In the non-social media world, it would have just remained a private exchange of emails.

Within the social media context, the communication trail has gone through several blogs (many of which are highly trafficked), and re-syndicated or referred to by other blogs.

It has also been twittered about (with many of the protagonists in this exchange having followers in the high hundreds.

Add to this the number of Youtube and other video responses being generated, and you can see that a minor disagreement has blown up to probably most of the affiliate industry knowing or at least hearing about this.

If you factor in the fact that Continue reading →

Social Media Getting Too Close For Comfort?

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Note to self: Do not keep the bulk of tax filing till the last month before taxes are due.

In the midst of shuffling paper around for hours and hours in my office (a real joy), I’ve been listening to episodes of Geekcast.

What I like about Geekcast’s easygoing, conversational banter between Shawn Collins, Lisa Picarille, Jim Kukral and Sam Harrelson is that it’s pretty stream-of-consciousness and more shoot-from-the-hip compared to a more produced program like Lisa and Shawn’s Affiliate Thing or Linda Woods’ Affiliate Marketing Insider.

It’s like talk radio for the internet marketer, and goes beyond the affiliate marketing/affiliate management/blogging/social media borders to cover all things “geeky”.

In the latest episode Web 2.0 is the Devil, (yes, it’s still a dirty word) – it’s interesting to hear about the dirty word beyond it’s traffic and monetization implications to get into the guts of the zeitgeist or spirit of social media.

As Lisa mentions, how do you separate Continue reading →

Facebook Developers? Pick Up Monetization Tips At the Facebook Developers Garage

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I’ll be on a panel next week at the second Singapore Facebook Developers Garage on March 5th, 715pm-1030pm.

The event is sponsored by Microsoft and the National University of Singapore.

Here’s a snippet of the panel:

facebook developers garage

If you didn’t already know, a number of the hottest Facebook Applications are coming out of Continue reading →

Facebook Monetization Service $uper Rewards Officially Launches

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A key indicator that a technology has reached maturity is when people are able to make full time incomes from it. In this case, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook social network has grown beyond just college kids, to include a development architecture where independent programmers can develop applications which ride on the Facebook platform.

Even better, Facebook applications and their developers are banking big, to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and possibly even a million dollars in a week.

facebook

Enter the latest entrant, Facebook application $uper Rewards, spearheaded by Jason “Chickenhole” Bailey.

While Jason is one of the owners of CPA network Millnic Media, he has mentioned that $uper Rewards is independent of Millnic Media and will work other networks and merchants to expand it’s business opportunity.

What is $uper Rewards?

$uper Rewards functions as a “Facebook Application monetization widget” that Facebook Application developers can insert in their applications.

It’s based on a PHP architecture and provides access to more than 300 offers from about 12 different affiliate/CPA networks.

The $uper Rewards platform includes features like geo-targeting functions to provide geographically appropriate offers to the application users.

jason bailey chickenhole

Jason Bailey “Chickenhole”

As Jason describes the service: “$R is a tool for any points/rewards based application which allows developers to easily manage incentivzable offers from dozens of CPA networks. This is a DEAD SIMPLE cut and paste solution that does 95% of the work associated with monetizing such an app for you.”

Among the key features of $uper Rewards:

  • Incentivizable Offers to cover EVERY COUNTRY on the planet
  • Over 30 Canada Specific offers
  • Over 25 UK specific offers

Some of the other features, include:

  • Geo Targeting management
  • Managing all of the creative
  • Maximizing revenue from each user, including customer support

Some of the Facebook Applications already incorporating $R include:

Some feedback from an early adopter: “$uperRewards rocks. We tried the main CPA networks – offerpal, cpalead etc etc. Right now $uperRewards is generating exactly 20 times the revenue per daily active user of the next best network we used.”

Compared to other comparable services, $R offers the highest Continue reading →

My 2007 Social Marketing Trail Of Success

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Two elements are critical to the success of any social marketing campaign.

The first element is one that just about everyone is good at – The size of your network.

I say everyone is good at this element because all it takes to massively increase the number of friends in your MyBlogLog, BumpZee, YouTube, Facebook or other community is hitting the ‘add friend’ button and doing it over, and over, and over, and over again.

But here’s where it gets interesting, the fine line between social marketing and spamming is drawn when the relationship and more importantly permission and consensus are factored in.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve datamined someone’s email, cell phone from the net, your attempt to game the social network for personal gain falls flat on its face if you don’t have the relationship to back it up.

You might be wondering if this is merely ‘theoretical’ or ‘hypothetical’ or how well it works in real life…

Look at what happened to me last year…

I’ve been active on the WickedFire affiliate marketing forum for some time, giving advice on my pet area of blogging. So having been invited to be a ‘Blogging Guide’, I spend more time on the forum and create an instructional thread on “Blogging For Bucks”

And one day I read a thread on the forum about this new Super Affiliate’s blog, Super Affiliate Mindset.

And after talking with PPC Super Affiliate Amit Mehta for some time, we decide to jointly work on a product, which eventually becomes the Super Affiliate Accelerator. (the site is being upgraded at the moment).

The project is intended to create a series of custom training to provide business strategies and PPC tactics to new and experienced affiliate marketers.

Part of the program involves inviting other established Internet Marketers in on some of the mastermind sessions we’re organizing.

So I ask my friend Wil Reynolds, founder of top SEO agency Seer Interactive, to join in on one of our upcoming calls.

And as part of my research, I watch some of Wil’s videos from Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s Affiliate Summit Seminar.

If you’re new to Search Engine Optimization, undoubtedly, Wil’s suggestions to check out 3 key blogs to keep you up to date on SEO developments will be intriguing.

What are the 3 blogs?

Listening to Wil’s recommendations, I opened my copy of SEOBook I’d purchased early last year.

I’d glanced through it a number of times and picked up great SEO tips and subsequently listed it on my recommendations page.

Now, with the weight of Wil’s endorsement, I re-read it (all 350 pages in a 2 hour sitting).

If you have not read it yet, you will not know that it goes beyond SEO, to encompass Aaron’s copywriting strategies and even PPC management. More importantly, Aaron includes elements of his Internet Marketing journey from spamming links to creating quality white hat links.

If you haven’t yet, why not spend the opening days of this year, checking out Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.

Is A BlogRush Syndication Credit Bubble (and Crash) Coming?

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On a number of forums and blogs like i am jack’s “The Three Big Problems With BlogRush“, there’s concern that “syndication credits” (the social currency earned and used to drive traffic) in John Reese’s BlogRush network is outpacing the rate at which they can be used. Is there a bubble building?

A bubble can develop when the supply outpaces the supply. For example, if a banana republic cranks their printing presses and floods the market with money, it causes hyper inflation, that burger which cost $5 before, might cost $100 now (due to the drop in the value of money). It leads to a crash in the economy.

There’ve been a number of bubbles in history, from the Tulip bubble (where people speculated in tulips), a run on semiconductors, real estate, and more recently the dotcoms in 2000. Is BR headed for the same?

For one, I hardly think a widget is going to have the same level of social impact as the dotcoms. So please drop the doomsday scenarios already.

Secondly, let’s look at the mechanics of the system.

You earn a “syndication credit” (which you can trade for a reciprocal link display on someone else’s blog).

Each time a blogrush widget is displayed, it Continue reading →