It seems that everyone loves to talk about how to get advertising approved on Facebook and how exactly Google Adsense might still work for affiliates. If you look out at all the gurus programs, they seem to spend an unusual amount of time on these two platforms – but ignore one platform that I never hear anyone talk about.

This is the #2 search engine in the world, that has a worth of over $50B depending on its stock price.

That would be Baidu, the Chinese Search Engine that some people think will be worth more than Facebook in the near future.

Yes, you heard me right: the #2 search engine in the world is Baidu, not Yahoo or Bing. They don’t even come close in fact. In China it’s the #1 search engine, dominating the market, and with more Chinese speakers coming on the Internet, it might be pretty damn soon when its the top in the world.

So here comes the kicker: affiliates and marketers are not advertising on Baidu, because frankly, no one is talking about it.

Seriously: you will not find a single guru, marketing course, private forum or anyone telling you how to advertise on the #2 search engine in the world. In theory, it’s a huge untapped market for affiliates to market a variety of products that Chinese speakers both in China and the US would love

So, why aren’t people running on Baidu then? As Mike Bonfils of SEM International Explains:

Baidu’s business model is to sell its advertising via agencies. It isn’t easy to open a direct account. Baidu has hundreds, if not thousands, of “agencies” but many are not what we would expect in the West, most of Baidu’s agencies are merely “resellers” of Baidu’s advertising programs. However, there are many agencies in China who do offer added value services, as do a few overseas companies who usually have subsidiary branches in China.

The good news is that it used to be harder: Baidu used to only have a Chinese model for advertisers, and no English support whatsoever. That’s changed.

Frank Watson Explains in Search Engine Watch:

Dominant Chinese search engine Baidu quietly launched more of its international efforts with the help of a Singapore-based partner and their new website – Baidu International – and a Twitter account to start following people in the search industry.

Now marketers  really interested in Baidu can go to http://is.baidu.com/paidsearch.html and contact them directly and learn about their services. Consider this: almost no one is using Baidu in our industry, so if you are the first one to figure it out, you’re going to find yourself a very, very wealthy affiliate.

Since my last article in November (Content Unlocking Exposed), the content locking industry has seen explosive growth and further recognition by advertisers as a profitable channel to generate leads, and by publishers as a viable option to monetize their premium content. The end result is that both publishers and advertisers have been able to generate increasingly high ROIs in comparison to (or in conjunction with) traditional marketing channels.

Publishers are often asking how to maximize earning potential with content locking. In most cases, they are only looking into the short term and are at times willing to forgo end user satisfaction for more ad revenues. However, I have asserted this many times before and firmly believe that the true earning potential of content locking can be achieved by focusing on:  

 1) Seamless integration

It is imperative that publishers choose the content locking integration that is best suited for their premium content. The right integration will be seamless for the end user and thus decrease bounce rate, increase end user response rate, increase end user satisfaction, and ultimately increase revenues generated. At Adscend Media, we provide the standard overlay content locking tool, a hosted file/link locking tool, and a robust API that allows complete customization for advanced publishers with basic programming knowledge.  After selecting the tool that will best fit your premium content, it is important to make full use of the available customization options to make the content locking integration as seamless as possible with the premium content. It’s important to use customized background images, relevant header text, to optimize other available options, and optionally to select the highest EPC offers that are relevant to your site audience.

Example: An indie artist with a website to share and sell their music could integrate content locking by adding an alternative to their purchase button. The alternative button (which could state something like “Download for Free*” with a disclaimer underneath noting it requires an offer completion and other relevant disclaimers) will load up the Adscend Media robust API customized to have the same look and feel as the website. This will allow the artist to introduce an additional revenue stream without affecting the current revenue streams, and the fans will feel more comfortable exploring the new option if they are interested.

2) Slowly introducing the tool to the audience  

Publishers who are looking to introduce content locking on their websites should introduce the tool slowly to assess the impact it has on their audience. The goal is to be as minimally invasive as possible of the end user experience. This involves assessing your typical users and how they would respond to the content locking tool, including at different integration points. Split testing various integration points is a way to determine what your site audience responds to best. If possible, I always recommend that publishers introduce the tool to the major countries first to assess the performance. Remember, some international countries have no offers, or offers that are not satisfactory for some end users. In those cases, it may be best to introduce the content locking tool to users from specified countries. 

Example: The same indie artist in the first example could explore integrating the content locking tool at different points on the website. In the beginning stages, the tool can be introduced as a promotional pop up to gather and assess user feedback before introducing it as a permanent feature. The tool can be introduced in the major countries first, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. As feedback is received, the indie artist can assess whether to introduce additional countries. After some testing, the indie artist may decide to limit the tool to certain countries where it performs best to ensure user experience in a country with limited offer/survey choices is unaffected.

3) Provide content that creates value for the end user   

Content is vastly different and some content is a better fit for the content locking tool than others. It is very important for publishers to provide the end user valuable content to ensure they keep coming back for more. There is a higher likelihood that users will come back for additional content if the quality of the content provided is high. 


Here is a brief list of ideas/content that may work well with content locking:

–   Mobile apps (both allowing users to download apps for completing a survey & in app monetization)

–  Instructional videos (e.g. specific guitar lessons)

–   Virtual worlds (items/currency)
–   Font site, wallpapers, Windows themes
–   Guitar tabs, bass tabs, sheet music, etc.
–   Music – if you own the rights, you can lock it! Indie bands can offer songs for free and fans can support their artists by downloading. Also makes a good Donate alternative
–   Templates: web, flash, WordPress, forum, etc.
–   File conversion sites (doc/docx, PDF, keep it legit)
–  Graphics: icons, stock photos/images, textures
–   Software downloads or in software monetization
–   Games (online/flash, freeware, items/currency)
–   How-to sites similar to eHow or Instructables
–   Code, plugins (forum, etc.), browser add-ons, royalty free sounds
–   House plans, blueprints, etc
–   Online shopping carts – as ‘payment’ method / free shipping / discounts
–   Free blurays, movie tickets, CDs/iTunes, books/Amazon cards, photo prints
–   Ebooks

Although it is easier for publishers to simply add the content locking tool as-is to their websites, taking an approach that considers the site audience will maximize the earning potential for publishers in the long term. 

Wrote a nice blog post, think people will like it? Well, that’s obviously the first part, but now you need to market it, drive visitors to it. Here’s a handy InfoGraphic from Divvy that explains 12 steps on marketing your blog post.

As always, click on the InfoGraphic to get a full version, otherwise its not very helpful.

In off-beat news, the Journal of Social Psychology and Personality Science has published a study that says that buying organic food in turns makes you a huge fricken jerk. Seriously.

Yes, it’s true: all the marketing that goes into getting you into Whole Foods and spending $5 for apples, also transforms you into a judgmental prick.  The author of the study, Kendall Eskine, stated that:

 I’ve noticed a lot of organic foods are marketed with moral terminology, like Honest Tea, and wondered if you exposed people to organic food, if it would make them pat themselves on the back for their moral and environmental choices. I wondered if they would be more altruistic or not.

Not going to go into exactly what the study found to make these claims, except basically to point out that people who bought organic food thought themselves somehow morally superior than those that didn’t – and then went on to judge other people.

What’s the moral of the story? Not quite sure, except perhaps just because you are willing to spend ridiculous amounts on food that will rot right after you put it in the car, doesn’t mean others need to. It also proves that since you feel so stupid for spending so much at the grocery store, you need to be really pissy towards other people in order to not feel all that bad about spending your life savings on tomatoes.

What does this have to do with Performance Marketing? Absolutely nothing whatsoever, except that you can sell shit to about anyone.

Oh, and that just because your wearing itchy baggy clothing that is made from some tree in China, doesn’t mean you’re not a complete ass.

The government of Iran is pissed about lots of things. It usually has something to do with the United States or Israel, or occasionally just women’s hair. Who knows what that crazy Guardian Council is up to on a daily basis? Well, it seems that Death to America has been replaced with “Death to Google” over the issue of what to name the “Persian Gulf.”

Yep, you heard it here: The Islamic Republic of Iran is waging war on Google, because they’ve taken out the name “Persian Gulf” from maps.  According to a spokesperson of the Iranians Government, if Google does not immediately put the name “Persian Gulf” back on the map, Google will suffer “serious damages.”

When Brian Weiss was killed on May 10^th, Performance Marketing Insider received information from reliable sources  in the industry that pointed to one thing: that Russian organized crime was involved in his death.  While at first we incorrectly reported, within hours, that a Russian hitman had killed him, it seems that the general story is correct and deeply disturbing.

The Miami News Times is reporting that the police are actively investigating his ties to the Mob.

But police are considering a Russian mob angle to the killing, Kelly (NYPD Police Commissioner) says. The names of the other men in the meeting haven’t been released, but all live in South Florida and all were heard speaking a language that may have been Russian.

According to insiders, the money that he and his partner owed was intimately tied to Russian gansters from Brooklyn. With the death of the re-bill offers there may have been some outstanding  “issues” that needed to be resolved. While we may never know exactly what happened, it raises some questions about the involvement of organized crime in our industry.

It seems that perhaps the Russian Mob had become involved in Re-bills years ago. As the Acai offers grew larger, more and more consumers were complaining – and their merchant accounts were being shut off left and right. This left what was once a very, very profitable re-bill business without methods to bill their customers. The model was “working” but no one could get merchant accounts, or more importantly get paid from the merchants once the complaints hit.

Banks were also very aware of the re-bill issues  and started to put all these companies and their principles on ban lists.  They could not get accounts anywhere, and the merchant providers were on the lookout for anything involving re-bill of acai and similar offers.

While the stories are so far third party, innuendo, and a lot of speculation, it seems that many people have been talking about what happened next: the Russian Mafia got involved in order to make sure the re-bills were kept alive.  They applied pressure to some banks, including at the Bank of Israel, to ignore the obvious fraud and keep on re-billing consumers credit cards….often ignoring refunds. As part of this deal, they were expected to be paid off regularly, receiving a nice piece of the pie.

As one person told me on AIM last week: the Russians have a bunch of people they are “looking” for and they should be very concerned. Normally, when a business goes under, the people aren’t paid and they often sue… but the Russian Mafia doesn’t accept that as an excuse. They aren’t really into “court battles.” You owe them money whether or not you made money, and they could care less about Bankruptcy Notices.

Seems like another great example of why not to get yourself involved in less-than-ethical businesses, no? If you think the FTC is badass, you should meet my friend Ivanov. He doesn’t need an attorney. Anyone know where Jesse Willms is hiding?

Lately there has been more and more insight into the death of SEO Rankings. While the SEO has been reeling from the Panda and Penguin updates from Google, it seems that even without that, what are “real” search rankings are changing daily. The idea that you can “rank” higher than your competitor by link building and other tricks is not at all true, and the entire SEO game has changes.

The real issue here is personalization. As the fine folk at MarkingProfs put it:

 Personalization is now forced on users of Google and Bing if they are not logged in. When logged in, you have the option to turn personalization off—if you are aware of the possibility, and have an idea where to turn it off. (See the two paired gray buttons in the upper-right-hand corner of the screenshot? The globe icon means “un-personalized” and the person icon means “personalized”).

Therefore, a ranking report is now an indicator of relevance, not a metric for judging the average click-through rate of a listing in position X or to determine what your traffic should be.

How do you reach searchers in your market if Google is changing the way the online search game is played? The answer is… engagement—via social and website content, and via advertising.

Basically, what they are saying is that engagement is more and more important when it comes to search rankings. The more times someone clicks on your site, the more time they engage your site both through social media and other functions, the more times it will show up in their personalized search rankings.

How does Search now work? Well, Tom Shmitz wrote  a few months ago in Search Engine Land the following analysis:

What you see in the Google search results and what I see, for the exact same query, are likely to be two different sets of results, thanks to:

• Personalized search results based on our own search history
• Influenced search results based on our friends’ search histories
• Local search results
• Brand mentions in social media and on web pages
• Query deserves images, video, products, news or other types of search results
• Query deserves freshness
• Query deserves diversity
• Brand mentions on social media and the web
• Over 500 algorithm changes a year

Driving traffic initially to your site through other means is the BEST way to rank now? Yes. Basically if you can acquire more people going to your site over and over again, via Facebook, Twitter, Emailing and other means, you’ll find more and more organic traffic. This means that traditional marketing, such as banner advertising, email marketing and general great engagement techniques are more and more important.

Turns out that a lot of people don’t click on banner advertising anymore. We already know about “banner blindness” which is occurring at greater rates, but what other reasons are banner ads sucking?  Turns out there are a lot of reasons that people don’t click on banner ads including:

31% are worried that their internet behavior will be tracked
54% don’t trust most online banner ads they see
55% are worried about getting a virus
57% are afraid of receiving spam from advertisers

The following InfoGraphic explores this issue. As always, click on the InfoGraphic to get the full image and viewpoints.