Google’s New Anti-Banner Algorithm

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2012-01-21

In what seems to be a monthly update to considerable piss off site-owners, Google has announced a new change to their algorithm that will significant affect millions of website owners. The change, dubbed by Google as the “Page Layout Algorythm” is focused on hurting sites that have too many banners above the fold, and not very much content.

As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

While in their own explanation, they point out that they will not be penalizing sites that have “normal” above-the-fold ads; they will be seriously targeting sites that have “too many.” Of course, they aren’t sharing what normal means, except to explain that its any site that pushes too much content down the page in exchange for banners.

Already people have written on Matt Cutts blog with angry comments about, this including “Daniel Roofer”

Matt Cutts, you are perhaps the most awful hypocrite on the www. Now perhaps you could explain why it’s acceptable for Google to go ahead with this “not a very good user experience” approach to above-the-fold ads in their own search result pages, but when small businesses do the same they suffer loss of revenues because of your hypocritcal policies? You are starving small websites of the opportuniy to earn revenue while creaming it off yourself.

Backlink marketer, Cyrus Pickens commented,

Thank You. Now I understand what happened to my site. I was ranking on the first page ( number 4 spot) and then yesterday I dropped to number 61. I made no changes to my site. Income has completely dried up. I have 2 adsense blocks at the very top. I just removed them. Hopefully I will return to my previous position.. Google is trying to destroy affiliates.

Mark Williams at iCrossing, appropriately commented and echoes my thoughts:

We will have to see how far this algorithm change goes, however initial thoughts are that this could heavily affect download sites which are commonly known to heavily use (often unrelated) banner advertising. This could also affect publishers and retailers who rely on banner advertising revenues. It has been stated widely though that this change will not affect sites that use roll over, overlay or pop up banners, which have become more common these days. With this in mind maybe this change may just mop those sites which are clearly filling the entire screen with banner ads. What are your initial thoughts on this change?

Proof of Income: Which Bloggers Make Cash?

By

Vernessa Taylor | CoachNotes Blog

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2012-01-21

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A review and roundup of the best blog monetizing strategies of 2011

No doubt about it, 2011 was a good year for learning new ways to increase traffic, gain readership and monetize blog content. Although measuring success is subjective, numerous bloggers openly report blog earnings both to document results and to offer a training ground others can use for their own benefit.

Here’s a roundup of some of the best blog monetizing strategies, a peek into income reports, and marketing insights from bloggers in the know. A cross-segment of bloggers is represented here: small business bloggers, mommy-bloggers, college students who blog. The commonality is the desire and effort put forth to make it pay — also known as monetizing blog content.

Roundup #1: Cool Dozen of the Best Articles on Monetizing Blog Content

Ready. Set. Go!

Experiencing success with monetizing blog content has to do more with mindset than know-how. Setting goals, being flexible and adaptable, persevering, broadening horizons, and choosing one’s own path in the face of “crowd think” … ready, set, go!

Blogging Success – Reflecting on my Exciting Blogging Journey in 2011

Like most serious bloggers and marketers, I set myself some goals at the end of 2010. And, one of them was to take my blog to a whole new level of success… The outcome? … I stepped out of my comfort zone, pushed and challenged myself in order to get my blog to where it is today. Truth be told, if you want to grow as an entrepreneur and a person and build a profitable business, then you need to push yourself, challenge yourself. — Mavis Nong – Attraction Marketing Online

Paid Guest Posting Opportunities
Mark Thompson – Stay On Search
Many articles on how to crawl out of your shell — by way of guest posting, but not many on where opportunities exist to compensate you (monetarily) for the effort. Here’s a good one.

New York Times: About Monetizing Motherhood and Blogging
Dagmar Bleasdale – Dagmar*s Momsense
Although this post was written in 2010, the writer made a comment referencing it on a similar subject (What Do You Think About Sponsored Reviews – Yay or Nay, Jennifer James, Mom Blog Magazine) in 2011. I’ve included both here to point up both the lucrativeness of the strategy and the controversy that surrounds the topic of sponsored reviews and >paid content.

Dagmar says: “Mommy bloggers are still just beginning to figure out what they want and think is fair. I personally always knew that I wanted this blog to be something I’m making money with — and I boldly stated that in my first Dagmar’s momsense blog post. A lot of us who blog professionally have gotten over being shy to ask for payment because we realized how much clout our opinion has. If we are doing our job correctly, our readers look for us to inform them and they value and trust our opinion.”

Analyze. Tweak. Rinse. Repeat.

Replicating what works is easier to do when you have historical data to analyze. Conversely, you can also discard what bombs. Best practices, shared by others, are also a boon to your efforts to monetize blog content and build your business empire.

Understanding How to Monetize Website Traffic
Mitz – Website/Blog Name
From diversifying blog income streams to properly analyzing results, Mitz dives into a cross-section of activities involved with monetzing blog content. The many comments on this article provide context for how bloggers currently monetize traffic and raises lots of questions (with lots of answers).

7 AdSense Strategies You Should Adopt
Lisa Irby – 2CreateAWebsite
The title says it all . . . Location, channels, placement, video . . . Lisa Irby covers her own results with using these AdSense tips, places emphasis on testing and tweaking, and discusses one lesser-used technique for boosting revenues.

Systemizing Your Startup 101
Andrew Werner – Mixergy
Werner interviews successful entrepreneurs who analyze their success, share their closely-held business strategies, best practices, and things to watch out for. Here’s a takaway: a Guide with accompanying audio in mp3 format from The Lean Startup interview with Eric Ries)

Leave No Stone Unturned

Using every strategy available to increase your income earning options means you leave no stone unturned as you ferret out what works for your blog and your customers. From managing your own banner advertising to monetizing your video creations, these articles help you drill down.

Video Marketing Strategy To Brand Your Business
James Pruitt – IM Relations
More and more, having a video marketing strategy is becoming critical to the success of your website. You can also share the videos on your blog, and never forget, your email list will always like to hear some valuable news from you! These are great people who want to see what you have to share, and they can give you more views on your videos, increasing your rankings pretty fast on the video sites.

Passion to Profits Blueprint
Stella Anokam – Strategic Internet Marketing
Giving away free stuff is still a heavy contender as a passive blog monetization strategy. When done right, the receiver gets something truly valuable and the giver gets the long-term rewards. An unusual free digital book that’s off the beaten path is the original creative fantasy penned by blogger Mitchell Allen of Morpho Designs.

Powerhouse Blog Monetization Strategies

Product creation and monetizing your mailing list are at the top of the powerhouse strategies for generating steady income. The promotion starts with good content — on your blog — and spirals upward and onward. Two overlooked powerhouse strategies, perhaps because of additional time commitment or technical requirements, are managing a forum in conjunction with a thriving blog and running blogging contests.

How to Research and Publish an eBook Successfully

It is hard to argue that there can be another more passive way to generate income online other than publishing an eBook. Once you publish an eBook, you can sell it on unlimited platforms online for as long as those platforms and the Internet exist. And that can be done with little to no monetary investment. — Sunil – The Extra Money Blog

Which Forum Script Should You Use With Your WordPress Powered Website?
Robert Muldoon – WP Mods
According to Muldoon, linking your blog with a community forum substantially increases your money-making potential. Muldoon says, “Between 2001 and 2008, the majority of my income online came from discussion forums I owned or websites I owned that also had a discussion forum. I guess I was a little bit of a forum junkie. It was definitely a contributing factor in my decision to move into blogging more seriously in 2006. When you think about it, writing a long blog post isn’t really any different from writing a long forum post.” (see also Why I Don’t Use bbPress

Surviving the Blog Contest, Who Survived the Blog? – Final Results
Kiesha Easley – WeBlogBetter
Gamification in the form of blogging contests is a money-making blogging strategy that takes hard work, fair rules, and strenuous promotion. Easley’s Survior contest (patterned after the popular TV Show Survivor but no less adventurous) was a well-run team-based head-to-head competition with a serious cash prize. Other successful blog contests of 2011 included ones sponsored by FamousBloggers.net, Traffic Generation Cafe, and CommentLuv. A couple of contests happening at the time of this writing include Blogging Tips 101 and Blog Engage.

Roundup #2: Proof of Income

Bloggers Who Shared Income Reports

Laying aside shyness and embracing levels of transparency that are not necessarily steeped in bragging rights or one-up-manship, a cadre a bloggers are showing their rising revenue numbers to all who care to peek. Not entirely altruistic, believable numbers garner trust for the transparent, increasing opportunities to upsell training, gain consulting clients, or at the very least, pre-sell upcoming books (or ebooks). Throughout the year, these bloggers report blog earnings, shared best practices, caveats, and tons of useful information.

Hesham Zebida – Famous Bloggers Network

I made big earnings compared to the last months, and I spent almost all the money here and there, buying stuff and not thinking about tomorrow for the first time(!)

Most profitable strategies: Thesis Awesome Theme Skins (own product), Optimize Press Theme, Genesis Theme customization
Link to October 2011 Earnings Report

Justin Germino – DragonBlogger

[T]he interesting thing to point out is that this was my highest earning month yet not my highest traffic month which shows that earnings can increase without traffic increasing.

Most profitable strategies: Answers.Yahoo.com, Kindle Fire articles
Link to December 2011 Earnings Report

Ana Hoffman – Traffic Generation Cafe

I made it my priority to work on improving rankings for my product reviews specifically, but also other posts that have great potential to capture a high number of Google users. … This [2012] will be the year for me to turn Traffic Generation Cafe from a hobby into a business.

Most profitable strategies: CommentLuv Plus plugin sales, sponsored review
Link to December 2011 Earnings Report

TriNi – Make Money Online Free

I recently started back college, trying to finish my Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration (Accounting) . . . and also still working full time and taking care of a household, life has kept me pretty busy! However, I have still been making money online from this blog …

Interesting strategies: Online surveys, gift cards
Link to August and September 2011 Earnings Report

Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income

November was a good reminder, once again, that diversity is extremely important. … November and December are historically the slowest month’s for sales on the website – professionals aren’t studying during the Holidays . . . the environment you work in has a major impact on your work flow and productivity.

Interesting strategies: iPhone Apps
Link to November 2011 Earnings Report

Laura – Passive Income from Your Dorm

There are many ways that you can earn money from your dorm room. I’ve decided to write this blog for those of us in a position of trying to earn money while in school. Ultimately, I hope to be able to look back . . . and state that I am earning my entire income online.

Interesting strategies: Writing local, college-life artices for online news magazine
Link to Examiner.com Contributor Earnings for November 2011

Eric – My 4-Hour Workweek

If I had to pick a word that sums up my past couple months of online work, it would be this: irony. Both December and November were highly productive months, yet somehow, they have led to two of my lowest consecutive earning months. [*]

The quote is from Eric’s end of year report, however, the earnings report linked to here is one in which he discusses how his earnings were affected by the Google Panda update.

Most interesting (and profitable) strategy: Peer-to-peer lending (investments)
Link to October 2011 Earnings Report

That wraps up the roundups

Writing, managing, and monetizing blog content is not easy. But the income earned as a result of perseverence, testing, tweaking, and following best practices can be very, very rewarding. (And when the going seems a bit rough, no need to call the doctor, a little laughter goes a long way!) Here’s to hoping 2012 will find you using the most profitable blog monetizing strategies and we’ll get to see some of your blog earning reports.

Your turn …

How did you monetize your blog content in 2011? What were your favorite strategies? What’s your take on sharing blog earning reports? Planning to do anything different in 2012?

MegaUpload.com Shut Down by Feds

By

Pesach Lattin

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2012-01-19

13

File-sharing website, MegaUpload.com has been shut down effective Janaury 19th, by federal prosecutors claiming that the website has violated piracy laws. The website, founded by entrepreneur (and convicted criminal) Kim Schmitz, was until being shut down, the #1 file sharing website. Much of its revenue was made from performance-based and affiliate marketing advertisements placed on the website, providing one of the top display sources for the industry.

The indictment accuses the site of being actively involved in costing over $500M in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. Seven people were named in the complaint, and four people have already been arrested. They have been charged with a variety of crimes including piracy, conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, money laundering and even racketeering (organized crime).

The three people arrested, were arrested outside the United States by New Zealand Police, who arrested them based on provisional arrest warrants.

Megaupload had high-profile support from celebrities, musicians and other content producers, including Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and most famously Kanye West. The acting CEO of the company was revealed to be, just today, before the announcement of the prosecution, Swizz Beats, the husband of Alicia Keys.

In response to these allegations, the company has said “The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.”

What makes this lawsuit interesting, is that despite enormous protests on the 19th against laws that addressed this, it seems that government is shutting down websites without court orders, based on accusations, effectively preventing them from continuing operations.

Flavorpill.com pointed out,

It will be interesting to see how this drama shakes out. Megaupload has already filed a countersuit against UMG. Obviously, if Universal is successful, similar file-sharing sites are sure to be fair game for legal action. Meanwhile, we can’t help thinking that this is major labels’ way of punishing all of us for hating SOPA.

Additionally, New Zealand Police and the FBI raided the NZ Home of Schmitz, and seized loads of property, including a Lamborghini and MiniCooper. (Wonder which one he drove?)

Here’s the full list of seized goods, not counting bank accounts:

2010 Maserati GranCabrio, VIN ZAMKM45B000051328, License Plate No. “M-FB 212” or “DH-GC 470”, registered to FINN BATATO;
2009 Mercedes-Benz E500 Coupe, VIN WDD20737225019582, License Plate No. “FEG690”;
2005 Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM, VIN WDB2093422F165517, License Plate No. “GOOD”;
2004 Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM AMG 5.5L Kompressor, VIN WDB2093422F166073, License Plate No. “EVIL”;
2010 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG L, VIN WDD2211792A324354, License Plate No. “CEO”;
2008 Rolls-Royce Phantom Drop Head Coupe, VIN SCA2D68096UH07049; License Plate No. “GOD”;
2010 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, VIN WDD2120772A103834, License Plate No. “STONED”;
2010 Mini Cooper S Coupe, VIN WMWZG32000TZ03651, License Plate No. “V”;
2010 Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG, VIN WDC1641772A608055, License Plate No. “GUILTY”;
2007 Mercedes-Benz CL65 AMG, VIN WDD2163792A025130, License Plate No. “KIMCOM”;
2009 Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG, VIN WDC1641772A542449, License Plate No. “MAFIA”;
2010 Toyota Vellfire, VIN 7AT0H65MX11041670, License Plate Nos. “WOW” or “7”;
2011 Mercedes-Benz G55 AMG, VIN WDB4632702X193395, License Plate Nos. “POLICE” or “GDS672”;
2011 Toyota Hilux, VIN MR0FZ29G001599926, License Plate No. “FSN455”;
Harley Davidson Motorcycle, VIN 1HD1HPH3XBC803936, License Plate No. “36YED”;
2010 Mercedes-Benz CL63 AMG, VIN WDD2163742A026653, License Plate No. “HACKER”;
2005 Mercedes-Benz A170, VIN WDD1690322J184595, License Plate No. “FUR252”;
2005 Mercedes-Benz ML500, VIN WDC1641752A026107, License Plate No. DFF816;
Fiberglass sculpture, imported from the United Kingdom with Entry No. 83023712;
1957 Cadillac El Dorado, VIN 5770137596;
2010 Sea-Doo GTX Jet Ski, VIN YDV03103E010;
1959 Cadillac Series 62 Convertible, VIN 59F115669;
Von Dutch Kustom Motor Bike, VIN 1H9S14955BB451257;
2006 Mercedes-Benz CLK DTM, VIN WDB2094421T067269;
2010 Mini Cooper S Coupe, VIN WMWZG32000TZ03648 License Plate No. “T”;
1989 Lamborghini LM002, VIN ZA9LU45AXKLA12158, License Plate No. “FRP358”
2011 Mercedes-Benz ML63, VIN 4JGBB7HB0BA666219;
Samsung 820DXN 82” LCD TV;
Samsung 820DXN 82” LCD TV;
Samsung 820DXN 82” LCD TV;
Devon Works LLC, Tread #1 time piece;
Artwork, In High Spirits, Olaf Mueller photos from The Cat Street Gallery;
Sharp 108” LCD Display TV;
Sharp 108” LCD Display TV;
Sony PMW-F3K Camera S/N 0200231;
Sony PMW-F3K Camera S/N 0200561;
Artwork, Predator Statue;
Artwork, Christian Colin;
Artwork, Anonymous Hooded Sculpture;
2009 Mercedes-Benz ML350 CDI 4MATIC Off-Roader;
Sharp LC-65XS1M 65” LCD TV;
Sharp LC-65XS1M 65” LCD TV;
TVLogic 56” LUM56W TV;
Sixty (60) Dell R710 computer servers.

Report: 30% of Ad Impressions are Crap

By

Pesach Lattin

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2012-01-19

3

According to ComScore, the parent company of AdXpose an advertising verification company, a great deal of display advertising on the web is never actually seen. Using their new tool called Validated Campaign Essentials, Comscore claims they can actual track which advertisements are actually seen by consumers, and which are not.

According to the report, the reason that almost 1/3 of all advertisements are not seen, is because they are generally placed so far below on the website, that no one actually views them. Quite a few content websites, in order to generate more income, often put 728×90 advertisements on the bottom. These advertisements are called leaderboards, because they are supposed to be on top. While most advertising networks do not “officially” allow this, many of them ignore when their larger partners place these ads in weird places.

Another part of the report claims something even worse: that 72% of all campaigns were in the wrong place. That usually meant places where the content was not appropriate for the brand advertiser, such as adult-content sites and pirate sites.

This unfortunately shows what many people have been saying for a long time: that many of the display CPM advertising networks and exchanges are serving junk that can’t be seen, or is not on sites that actually are appropriate for brands. These numbers really show what I’ve been saying for a long time, that Brand Media Buyers are lazy and not really paying attention.

The solution: using metrics that performance-marketing experts have been using. Tracking conversions, having some sort of ROI that shows that the advertisements are not just clicked on, butting hitting the audience that actually wants the product. Just placing crap up anywhere and hoping its “good” needs to stop.

New Crazy Proven CPV Tool: StumbleUpon

By

Pesach Lattin

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2012-01-19

8

In trying to find new techniques that people aren’t using, and what affiliates can monetize, I’ve discovered, shall I saw, stumbles on StumbleUpon. In my research I’ve found very few mentions of StumbleUpon or any affiliate managers that are recommending it for a method of driving traffic. That leads me to believe this is an untapped source for a great wealth of traffic to affiliate offers.

With a great range of categories and a huge user base, I think this could be a great new method for people to try old campaigns that have been overpriced by Google and Facebook.

Last year, StunbleUpon Ads became StunbleUpon Paid Discover, which is a new great feature that allows you to create and submit a page and drive traffic directly to your site. This is a no-click model, very similar to any contextual CPV system, but without the adware and annoyed users! The pricing levels are from .05 to .25…

Get Free Traffic

Here’s the greatest news about this system: if it catches on, you can get tons more FREE stumbles as its will help push more people to stumble your site, and thus more people potentially viewing. It’s a jumpstart to something viral.

Like many systems, this has demographic targeting, which allows you target specific groups, genders, locations. Add in content category, and you can really target visitors sent directly to your site. On top of that, they have added the ability to use Google Analytics with the system, allowing you to better track your traffic in real time besides the normal affiliate tools.

Push Facebook
If you haven’t read, Facebook ads are getting more expensive. Even with a discount to pushing to your Facebook page, there is still an issue with traffic being expensive. Well, the great thing about StumbleUpon is that you can in theory drive traffic to your Facebook page, and get those customers completely entrapped into your Facebook campaign. It’s a great social marketing tool that is much cheaper than Facebook campaigns, and let’s assume that everyone on StumbleUpon probably also has a Facebook account, no?

Below is a great video on how to use StumbleUpon

Facebook Ads Getting More Expensive Unless…

By

Pesach Lattin

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2012-01-17

8

According to TGB Digital, Facebook advertising is getting siginificantly more expensive. In a report just issued, the firm claims that during the fourth quarter of 2011, Facebook CPC ad prices increases 10% compared to the previous three months.

During the Holidays, they claim that the price actually increased a whopping 55.7%, leaving marketers having to pay a premium during that time.

However, their report shows that one type of advertisement on Facebook is actually decreasing: ads that go to Facebook fanpage are becoming cheaper. If you bought ads that went to your Fanpage, youd pay an average 29% less than if you sent to a site off Facebook This is because Facebook wants to see advertisers use Facebook as their main promotion means.

“More and more brands in a huge range of business sectors are building a presence within Facebook to harness these lower costs,” the report says. For instance, retailers are attempting to generate sales directly on the social network via Facebook storefronts.

Obviously this is bad news for marketers who push direct sales on Facebook, as it means they will always pay a premium for such pricing. Facebook pages as a sales technique have already been proven as producing fairly low ROI and consumers aren’t that satisfied by Facebook advertising, according to another report.

Question: Is Facebook going to remain a way for performance marketers to promote their product, or is the internal method of promoting Facebook fan pages and other things going to die out? Think about this, will consumers still respond to page after page on Facebook that looks the same, being asked to like something over and over again, year after year?

Wise Affiliates go to AffiliateWise
New Campaigns Updated
http://www.affiliatewise.com

Facebook Shopping Rated Poor for Holidays

By

Pesach Lattin

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2012-01-16

0

Baynote, and ecommerce company has put together a report card on shopping experiences for consumers, and found strangely enough that using Facebook to shop for goods was a pretty bad experience.

As the chart points out, retail websites were rated very well, but facebook got less than stellar reviews, actually scoring less than using phones or tablets to shop. I’m not sure why tablet and phones weren’t just called mobile, but maybe they wanted to differentiate that because of their size.

One of the most interesting parts of the survey, which you can find here, is that 91.4% respondants said they didn’t buy anything on a Facebook fan page. This could be because not all Facebook fanpages have any sort of way to actually buy a product, such as integrated ecommerce, or because of some other reason. I’d love to know that part, and how that influenced the survey.

The real interesting part is that 80.2% of the people said they were not influenced at all from social media. It seems that shoppers don’t really care what they see in social media, or worse, brands aren’t that good at using social media to sell products.

This really raises some serious questions about the effectiveness on Facebook pages as a direct sales mechanism. Either it really sucks, or perhaps Facebook users aren’t willing to admit, or don’t know that they were influences by choices they saw on Facebook.

Zac Johnson’s Proven Ways to Jumpstart Facebook Campaigns

By

Zac Johnson

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2012-01-16

0

When it comes to creating an new ad campaign on Facebook, you can usually guess what demographics are going to work. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get a head start and not just have to guess and throw stuff against the wall and some stick and make you money? Through the power of Quantcast and Facebook Ads targeting, let’s walk you through the process of how you can kick start your ad campaigns from the beginning, and get a bit closer to profitability.

First, you need to find a good offer to test. In this case, we will use Astrology.com. Why Astrology.com? Simply because it’s a well known brand and is used by millions of subscribers and visitors monthly, and will make for a good case study. This offer pays around $1.90 per lead, and is available for several different countries through Neverblue.

Now that we have an offer, we have two choices… head over to Facebook Ads and start building a campaign based on who we guess might be interested in the offer, or actually do some research. Let’s do the later, and see what we can find out about the offer.

Since we know the landing page and offer is astrology.com, we can take that information and submit it into the form at http://www.quantcast.com.

Let’s take a look at the information we are now provided with… all for free!

Right off the bat we can see that more women (nearly 2-1) are visiting astrology.com. The best age ranges to target would be 18-34 and 35-49. There is also a decent amount of other useful information in there as well.

Remember, these are just estimates from Quantcast, and not always 100% accurate when building ad campaigns… but it’s better than taking a shot in the dark.

Quantcast can also provide you with other useful information, such as what other web site people are visiting after or while they may be visiting the site you are looking up. This can be useful if you are targeting web sites through CPV advertising.

Now, using what you’ve learned from Quancast, and already know about targeting on Facebook Ads, you can create an accurate ad campaign, as seen below.

See how we targeted the gender and age groups recommended by Quantcast, then through Facebook’s interests targeting, we were also able to target people who are already interested in astrology, horoscopes and tarot.

Before creating your next Facebook Ads campaign, make sure you take the time to do a little research with Quantcast, and see if it gives you a bit of a jump on your demographic targeting.

Is Bing Faking its Rankings and Searches?

By

Pesach Lattin

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2012-01-16

9

According to ComScore, Microsoft’s Bing has now officially overtaken Yahoo as the nation’s second biggest search engine. With 15.1 percent of the search engine market, Bing, only a few years off has made significant headway in competing in the market dominated by Google. Since Yahoo is actually using Bing results, this isn’t a surprise. However, the methodology that is being used to determine the rankings is easily fooled.

Simply put, Microsoft wants to be seen as a contender in the search market and is doing everything it can to drive visitors to Bing.com. They know that for Microsoft to compete against Google’s huge market share, they need to start selling more and more search traffic. Thus, they are using techniques that aren’t really “searches” to drive searches.

For example, when you go to the MSN Homepage, you get an entire section that is “On Bing.” Those links when clicked go to a “search” of those topics. In these cases they are driving significant traffic to Bing as “searches” when they are far from actual people going to Bing and using it a search engine. Instead they are readers who probably still use Google as their primary search engine, and will never type in “Bing.com” in order to get a search.

Additionally, they feature tons of articles that actually have links to searches that they have created themselves through the article. An example below of a John Elway dealership article shows that there are links embedded throughout the article, those links go to searches. For example, when clicking on “Denver Broncos” the links went to a search of the Denver Broncos. The user isn’t actually looking on Bing for information about the Denver Broncos, but all the companies that advertise on Bing are being told that there are tons of searches for sports teams and these people are “really interested” in these topics.

The problem with this type of search is that its “Directed Search” (a term that should be used) and its no way as valid as real searches. The people aren’t really interested in the topic as if they were searching for the topic, and when they click on advertisements their interest is significantly less. It’s about as search relevant as someone handing out fliers to people on the street and claiming they inquired about the product because they accepted the flier. It’s disingenuous and has a real impact on real search results.

In fact, Microsoft uses this technique on most of its sites, with links embedded all over the pages that point to specific searches. These searches are often hot topics, and drive people to Bing when they are far from “Bing Users.” Additionally, it’s a great way to drive searches to high paying CPC advertisements when they need traffic. Imagine being an insurance advertiser and paying $5-10 per click and having your budget depleted in a day on these fake searches?

I’d gather that if we knew the exact number of people who actually go to the Bing.com homepage and do real searches, that’s its only a small portion of the actual searches. A perfect example is that while supposedly that Bing is 15% of the search traffic, this publication gets hundreds of visitors a day from Google, Bing almost never shows up in our search logs. In fact we get more people from Yahoo Latvia than Bing.

So Bing’s rankings as the #2 Search engine is technically correct, but that in actual real searches its behind Yahoo still.

Kim Kardashian is Dead

By

Pesach Lattin

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2012-01-13

18

According to several reports out there, the Kardashians, especially Kim Kardashian, once able to push almost any product online, have hit a serious stumbling block. Their show, which was once one of the top shows on reality television has lost almost all of its viewership and worse, no one picks up magazines with Kim Kardashians face on it. It is reported to be on the block, to be canceled after this season.

“I’d pay her $600,000 personally not to go to Red Egg,” said Travis Bass, referring to the Chinatown hot spot he co-owns. “Kim Kardashian would be crushing to us. We’d have a meeting Monday and talk about how that happened.”

This is an important note to performance marketers, because Kim Kardashian in particular was an early adopter of Twitter, and was reported to have been paid thousands of dollars to promote products on Twitter. In fact, many people saw Kim as an unofficial spokesperson for Twitter’s success. This raises some questions if that people are tired of the Kardashians, could their focus on twitter also be starting to turn?

Additionally, it really brings attention to how finicky people can be. If Kardashian only a year ago could sell almost anything, and do no wrong, but now is considered a pariah to brands, what does that mean to something like Facebook? Could one mistake for Facebook cost them their almost 1 Billion users? One bad rumor about Facebook, perhaps spread on Google+ could cause a mass exodus and destroy the brand — like perhaps a sex tape of Zuckerberg?

Business Insider has insight on how they destroyed their brand

The wedding of Kim Kardashian to New Jersey Nets basketball forward Kris Humphries took place on August 20, 2011. It is estimated to have cost $10 million. However, by most reports, it did not cost the Kardashians a dime since it was financed by a variety of media and sponsors that used the wedding to promote their products. Unfortunately, the marriage lasted a mere 72 days when Kim announced through her publicist that she is filing for divorce. This caused the segment of anti-Kardashians to grow and for many to label the wedding a sham and a publicity stunt. Even noted saxophonist, Dave Koz, who played during the ceremony, told the press that he thought the wedding lacked authenticity and seemed more like a scene in a movie than a real wedding.

Whatever is happening with the Kardashians, it shows how fast people can go from a $100M a year brand to being completely hated. It’s a great example of how marketers need to stay focused and understand their audience and how to avoid bad press, or worse, associating themselves with something getting bad press.

Poor Kim has even been replaced by Bulldog in the upcoming Sketcher’s Superbowl commercial.

Wise Affiliates go to AffiliateWise
New Campaigns Updated
http://www.affiliatewise.com

Will Facebook Hit 1 Billion Users?

By

Pesach Lattin

-

2012-01-12

0

It seems ridiculous, but very soon Facebook will have at least 1 billion users worldwide. If you exclude all the spammer who make multiple accounts, that number might drop significantly, but its still a serious number. According to the folks at iCrossing, a digital agency, that might actually happen as soon as August 2012, based on current growth trends.

Using a process of linear regression on the data from the end of 2008 onwards we expect Facebook to hit a billion active users around August 2012. Looking at the data from 2006-mid 2008 it looks like Facebook was growing at an exponential rate, however more recent data suggests it’s growing in a linear fashion.

Facebook’s growth has slowed or stopped in many of its early adopting countries such as the US and the UK. However, developing countries such as India and Brazil have shown strong growth with India growing from 22million users to 36 million and Brazil going from 13 million to 30 million in the last 9 months. Both are large countries with millions of potential users who have yet to sign up to Facebook, with only 3% of India’s population on Facebook and 16% of Brazil’s (compared to 49% of America’s population or 47% of the UK’s population) countries such as these will clearly contribute heavily to Facebook’s continued growth.

I guess the real question is, how valuable are those users in today’s market, where users are finicky and move from one trend to another. A report by The Telegraph claims that an IPO would value those users at as much as $125 per users, as based on November of 2011.

The company is expected to file for the IPO before the end of the year, in a move which would place a value of around US$125 (£80) on each of its 800 million users.The $100 billion valuation would be twice as high as it was in January, when the company announced a $1.5 billion investment from Goldman Sachs Group and other backers.At $10 billion, the offering would raise more money than any other technology IPO – dwarfing the previous record holder, Infineon Technologies AG, which generated $5.23 billion in an IPO in 2000. Facebook expects to be required by U.S. regulators to disclose financial results by April 30, 2012, if it doesn’t go public by then, the company said in January.

That seems like a ridiculous amount since most studies show that the average Facebook user never converts for anything. Still, with almost 1 Billion users, how much is user really worth in the global and internet marketplace?

Crush the Competition with CrushAds
http://www.crushads.com

Password Fatigue Grows

By

Pesach Lattin

-

2012-01-12

2

ADOTAS – If you’re growing increasingly frustrated with being prompted to register as a new user on a website, if you have so many logins and passwords at this point you can’t keep track of them all, and if you notice your password fatigue is leading you to leave a site altogether if you can’t log in after a couple cracks, now there’s a study confirming you’re not alone. Social media user management platform Janrain has released the results of its second Social Identity survey (conducted by Blue Research by surveying over 600 users across the U.S.), in which 86 percent of respondents said they were bothered enough by the need to create new accounts across various websites that they’d change their behavior in one way or another rather than stay and complete registration. A full 54 percent said they might leave the site or avoid it in the future (though just 6 percent said they definitely would), and 26 percent said they’d just go to a different site if they could. The percentage of people who said they had, at one point or another, forgotten their login info and left a site instead of answering security questions or resetting the password doubled just in the past year — now 90 percent of all respondents say they’ve had that experience. And that registration data may not be all that reliable, anyway — 88 percent (up from 76 percent last year) said they’d given incorrect information or left a form incomplete while creating a new account.

Obviously this is problematic for advertisers, who lose opportunities for consumer engagement with every user who chooses not to enter a site. Janrain suggests here that one easy solution would be the option to log in via social media, and according to the survey, the number of people who are receptive to the idea of using social media is on the rise: In 2010, 66 percent of respondents agreed social login should be offered across various sites, in lieu of setting up a unique account at each, and in 2011, 77 percent agreed to the same. Among that 77 percent, 78 percent said they’d posted a comment or sent a message via social media about a product or service with which they’d had a positive experience, and 83 percent said people in their networks influenced them to consider new products or services.

Since Janrain actually provides a social login tool, the company has something of a vested interest in that particular solution to the password problem. But marketers will have to weigh the social data they could access with a social login against the ability to collect the specific kind of data they want through a traditional login. The whole study is available at Janrain’s website.

How Will The Expansion of the Domain Name World Affect Advertisers and Affiliates?

By

Michael Marchese

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2012-01-12

7

On Thursday, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, plans to open the floodgates to an entirely new world of new domain extensions. The impact to affiliates and advertisers is not to be diminished.

Based on the rules set forth by ICANN, companies or organizations with $185,000 can plunk down an application for ownership of their own domain extension. This extension can be any word or acronym: “.affiliates”, “.advertisers”, or anything else imaginable. ICANN insists, of course, that there will be a thorough review process of all applications. Regardless of how stringent the application process may be, the fact remains that new domain extensions will emerge, bringing about several problems for domain owners.

Increasing Overhead for Brand Advertisers

For large brand advertisers, these new changes may result in a significant rise in their domain registration costs. Today, many large brands choose to protect their names by purchasing all domain extensions associated with them. This goes beyond the typical “.com” and “.net” extensions. It also includes dozens of country code domain extensions, like “.co.uk” and “.ca”. If ICANN grants approval for hundreds of applications, advertisers will be forced to purchase new domain extensions for their brands (if available) on top of those they already pay for.

Affiliate Damage Control

For affiliates who own successful and visible affiliate websites, there will be an increased risk of site spoofing. Of course, affiliates already deal with this issue every day, with many imitators purchasing domain names that sound similar to theirs, or which contain a common typo of their name. Super affiliates may assign someone in their organization to spend an hour per week checking all the current domain extensions for violations of their site name. With the rollout of hundreds or even thousands of new extensions, the time required to review potential violations will increase dramatically. More sophisticated rip-offs and scams will also become possible.

More Sophisticated Scams

For example, super affiliate A has the domain name entitled 32WaysToSuccessfulSales.com. He is driving $500,000 of revenue per month. Much advertising is carried out to support the website. “32 Ways to Successful Sales” gains brand recognition among consumers, and word gets out that super affiliate A’s website is doing well. A couple of days later, a new website emerges called 32WaysToSuccessfulSales.now. The copycat does a black-hat, SEO marketing campaign and soon starts siphoning business. What is worse is that the copycat is using false advertising, failing to fulfill eBook orders, and using buyers’ credit cards to charge up thousands of dollars of expenses.

The affiliate is not alerted to the issue until his Better Business Bureau (BBB) rating has been hit and his customer support line is jammed with angry, ripped-off customers thinking he is to blame for the damage. It is a lot harder to convince angry customers that the affiliate only owns the dot com domain rather than the dot now domain, as the customer is looking at a similar if not identical site with the same name as the affiliate.

Unfortunately, ICANN is steaming ahead with their roll-out, despite strong opposition from numerous, governmental and industry groups. Affiliates should begin preparing their organizations for these changes now.

What is the Best CPA Network (Survey)

By

Pesach Lattin

-

2012-01-11

5

As far as I remember, I’ve been doing surveys (since 2000 actually) asking who the best CPA Network is. Many of the networks that used to be in the top 10 aren’t around anymore, and more importantly, many of them are still in the top 10, year after year. For those that said the industry would disappear in 2000, rest assured it’s still here and growing stronger and at the head of the industry is the CPA Affiliate Networks.

Please take our survey at

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BGTMJL2

New this year I’ve added the top Affiliate Manager, who will get at $1k Gift Card as a reward.
If I need to add anyone you think should be included, please email me at pace@pacelattin.com

UrbanObserver

UrbanObserver

ADOTAT

A review and roundup of the best blog monetizing strategies of 2011

Roundup #1: Cool Dozen of the Best Articles on Monetizing Blog Content

Ready. Set. Go!

Analyze. Tweak. Rinse. Repeat.

Leave No Stone Unturned

Powerhouse Blog Monetization Strategies

Roundup #2: Proof of Income

Bloggers Who Shared Income Reports

Hesham Zebida – Famous Bloggers Network

Justin Germino – DragonBlogger

Ana Hoffman – Traffic Generation Cafe

TriNi – Make Money Online Free

Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income

Laura – Passive Income from Your Dorm

Eric – My 4-Hour Workweek

That wraps up the roundups

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