There’s been some recent news about the possibility of Google working with the Dish Network to bring searches for television programming and YouTube videos to TVs, reported at places like the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ article tells us that besides actual tests of a Google settop box that allows searching for TV programming, [...]
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Will Google Bring Us Tabbed Windows on TV?
Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land
Speakers:
Brian Boland, Manager, Direct Response Solutions, Facebook
Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc.
Michael Kahn, SVP, Marketing, Performics
Will Scott, President, Search Influence
Facebook’s Brian is starting the session. He’s going to give an overview of how Facebook ads work. About half the audience is using Facebook ads now.
Mission: Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.
Product vision: identity, connections and sharing
Facebook scale: Rapid growth, the top daily reach of any site, including Google and Yahoo, they’re number one in the time spent on a site.
Direct response: Standard ads
Facebook Ads and Search
1. Users are at a different point in the sales funnel. Comparing a Facebook ad to a search ad and you see they’re very different. Facebook has a broader swath of users. Facebook ads will have an impact at the highest level of the funnel, demand generation, as well as the end with demand fulfillment.
2. Targeting is based on user interests, not keywords: take advantage of interests and connections. You can specify targeting for age/gender/location, authentic interests (not “keywords”, they’re changing that next week).
3. The ad environment and ad units themselves are very different.
Optimizing Facebook ads is between an art and a science. There are demographics reports that provide information about users viewing and clicking on ads. There are responder profile reports which tell you common characteristics of the users clicking on your ads.
Try it out. For new accounts or accounts created in the last 90 days, $50 coupon to test and learn with Facebook Ads. Limit 150 uses. Code: SMX50
Next Michael will talk about performance based advertising on Facebook and some applications that are being used to optimize Facebook advertising.
Performance Based Advertising
Facebook social ads are text and image based ads that appear in the right-hand rail of Facebook user’s profile pages
Bought on a CPC or CPM basis
Trigger by demographic
Benefits:
Increase brand exposure
Drive acquisitions/sales
Generate fans
Capabilities:
CPC auction-based media to target audiences on social networking sites and manage campaigns to optimal CPA, click or impression goals
They learned that Facebook is a fertile and welcoming promotional environment, with the right offers.
Case Study: Threadless
Facebook Application Development
Moxie Interactive developed an app for driving movie sales. It fetches movies or gifts your friends may like based on their profile interests. Select your Facebook friend in the “fetch” box. Users could add it to their profile. Users could share their fetch result with their network.
Benefits of a Facebook connection with your consumer:
Post ad for product 27%
Link to ad for product 37%
Purchase product 44%
Talk about product & recommend product, combined 46%
Will is next. He works with local businesses, almost all small businesses with small budgets. He’s going to compare search and Facebook ads with small budgets. He’s generally finding the same level of success on Facebook at a third of the price of the major search engines.
Display ads are earlier in the cycle. You can talk to them before users know they have a need.
Facebook Demographics
Facebook is like the third-largest country, or it rivals it in size. It’s also the third of the population with money to spend (they have computers, after all).
They’ve seen a huge savings on a cost per lead basis with Facebook. The advantages of Facebook are a lower CPC that traditional PPC, there’s great demographic targeting, and you get magazine-like editorial ads. Keyword filters allow tremendous targeting opportunities.
You can target fans of affinity groups. For instance, show ads of high-vanity product to fans of Victoria’s Secret. You can also show ads to fans of your competitor.
Facebook Advertising Benefits Summary:
Addie takes the podium next. She loves Facebook ads:
Who’s Advertising on Facebook now?
Finding Your Audience
It’s not search — it’s demand creation:
Testing is awesome:
They did a test of 6 ads for the same thing, same text, different images.
From here you can do a headline test. They saw up to 120 percent difference in unique CTR, 101 percent difference in conversion rate.
Challenges: Constantly evolving marketplace
How to Win:
Fears: Her mom is on Facebook. Facebook might not be that cool anymore. But she hopes it lasts because it’s a great platform and it’s getting better every day.
Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.
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Facebook Ad Tactics For Search Marketers
MIssed this when it came out a week or so ago, but it’s worth posting about after the fact a bit. The Small Business Success Index reports that social media adoption among small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the past year. From reading the release, I gather that “adoption” means a business is actively using social media, as opposed to just having a placeholder profile page.
Here are some of the other findings:
Small business owners use social media to attract new customers:
Small business owners still have concerns with social media:
The study is sponsored by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland Smith School of Business.
Advertisement: Try Site5 Web Hosting free for 30 days! 99.9% Uptime Guarantee and our customer’s love us!
This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.
More Small Businesses Using Social Media
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More Small Businesses Using Social Media
Guest post by Deb Ng from Freelance Writing Gigs.
While going over my stats last summer, I learned something important: If I stopped blogging each day, I would still earn enough each month from my content to draw a salary and pay the bloggers who write for my network. I’m no longer breaking even and I can tell you, after almost five years of trying to make this blog work out, the rewards go far beyond that of money. Success is a great motivator.
I would like to tell those who don’t feel niche bloggers can’t earn decent advertising revenue, they couldn’t be more wrong.
“Make money online” bloggers are always pimping affiliate links. Niche bloggers can’t necessarily do this. Our readers don’t want to receive pitches every day. Moreover, not all niche blog readers are buyers. For example, selling high end products via a frugal living blog probably isn’t the best idea. The same with my freelance writing blog; one thing I learned over the years is that writers don’t open their wallets for the next big thing. If they’re buying products through an affiliate link, it has to provide tremendous value. When I have sold it’s with conferences, books, ebooks, courses and other teaching products. The bulk of my income doesn’t come from affiliate links, however. They come from private ad sales and Adsense.
So, niche bloggers, here is my advice to you:
Many niche blogs are difficult to monetize, but they don’t have to be. If you study your community and traffic patterns, you can find some profitable solutions. You might have to think outside the box or sell your own stuff, but once your blog hits, the sales will soar.
Are you monetizing your blog now? What methods are using and how is it working out for you?
Deb Ng is a freelance writer, professional blogger, social media consultant and founder of the Freelance Writing Jobs network of blogs. Follow Deb on Twitter @debng.
Tags: Niche blogging
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
7 Tips for Profitable Niche Blogging
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7 Tips for Profitable Niche Blogging
I decided to turn on Google Buzz today to see what all the buzz was about. So far, it’s been quite a pleasant experience. I can see real potential in the product. There are some bugs in it but I’m sure Google will iron them out in the coming days and weeks.
I like Google Buzz enough to set up my Buzz page. I didn’t like the URL Google gave me so I created my own using the Ninja Affiliate WordPress plugin. If you’re on Google Buzz then please follow me.
So far, I’ve set up my Buzz to stream my blog, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter feeds. However, the Flickr and Twitter streams don’t seem to be working at this time. I’m sure they’ll be fixed soon. Have you tried Google Buzz yet? What’s your impression so far?
What Is Google Buzz?
Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most.
Google focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.
Google Buzz will be rolling out to all Gmail users in the next couple of days. To find out if you have it, just log out of your Gmail account and log back in. You should see a Buzz invite. If not, try again later. Every Gmail user will eventually get it.
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Follow Me On Google Buzz
I have seen DirectCPV advertising on this blog for awhile, and decided I would try them out. Overall I oversee thousands of dollars per month spent on CPV through my accounts and those I manage, but really Media Traffic is the primary company used as they seem to be the most stable and well priced.
I decided to give DirectCPV a run for their money, so I dropped $100 into my campaign (their minimum deposit), and forgot to enter my $30 coupon code (JCH30) to give my total $130. This was stupid on my part so I kindly sent them a support request asking if they could add the coupon to my account, and instead they added an extra $20, bringing my total to $150 for the case study.
I created a campaign promoting a free dating on facebook application, and since there are so many people who use Facebook, I decided to do the case study with DirectCPV’s Run of Network (RON), which is basically untargeted and super cheap ($0.004 per view).
In only a few hours, the campaign was capped and I had received 37,269 unique views to my landing page. While DirectCPV has a much smaller overall user-base than its adware competitors, 40,000 impressions is a very small percentage of their network so they are able to send it very quickly, and their low total amount of users wouldn’t affect me.
While we pay about the same price using Media Traffic, we get a little bit more targeting (rather than anyone from anywhere), so the numbers converted quite a bit less than I am use to with Media Traffic. However we had to talk with everyone at Media Traffic to get such a deal, and if anyone planned on using DirectCPV on a daily basis spending hundreds of dollars, I certainly would talk to them as well to increase your rates which I am sure something could be arranged.
Pros:
Cons:
Conclusion:
Overall I am very satisfied with this network. It is very cost effective and the pros definitely can outweigh the cons depending on what your goals are with advertising. There are definitely strong alternatives to DirectCPV, but like anything, if you do split testing you can definitely make this network work for almost any industry online.
If I had tested with a larger budget, and worked directly with an affiliate manager to get the best targeting for the cheapest deals, I believe this network could very easily be on par or better conversions than Media Traffic and the other big networks. Split testing everything takes time and money, and this case study could have certainly been optimized better if I ran it longer with more direct stats.
If I were to start over with DirectCPV, I would certainly not use Run of Network traffic and would instead start targeting it a little bit more. When it comes to targeting, a little bit can go a long way when it comes to conversions, so my conversion numbers could have been a lot better even if I am spending more per click. Otherwise I would have tried to get my minimum bid down for RON, or even see if I could get them to do country targeting for RON prices like I have done with other CPV networks. (Hint: They need your business as much as you need theirs, work with them so you both make money!).
If you plan on using DirectCPV to promote affiliate offers, then their $0.01/view URL targeting would probably be the best bet unless the offer is international and accepts conversions from many countries.
I realize $150 is a small budget to write a case study on, but I wanted to share my thoughts for those users on the edge and I hope some of you can take this post as some food for thought when it comes to trying out new affiliate networks. If anyone has anything other thoughts about their experiences with DirectCPV, feel free to post them in the comments below.
My name is Collin LaHay and this case study and guest post was written by me. I am currently rebranding my blog’s domain to my new flagship site called Uber Link Building where I share link building strategies that can help you raise your ranks in the search engines and ultimately make more money online.
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DirectCPV Review and Case Study
Growing up, I always thought of my dad as Mr. Tech, spending a Saturday afternoon fiddling to fix the vacuum cleaner or hooking up new gear for the family sound system.
I’d later hear stories of him attending a technical institute to learn the inner workings of the VCR. The punch line of the story is that he spent the last $400 in the newlyweds’ bank account to register for the class, pulled apart the pieces of their VCR like some eager clockmaker, and then artfully put the pieces of the VCR back together… as a trash pile.
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Twenty years later and I’m his go-to girl for anything done on a computer or online. My e-mail address is his e-mail address. While on trips he asks me to look up locations with the help of my magic square (read: iPhone). And more than once he’s asked me to buy his concert tickets online because Ticketmaster has forsaken him and his brick-and-mortar brood.
He was the first guy on the block to get a laser disc player and he’ll be the last guy on earth to sign up for Netflix. How is it that a once technically adventurous man became such a technophobe?
The answer to that question has had me terrified for years. Understanding how technology dependent my business and personal worlds are today, I know I’ll be trying to keep up with the increasingly fast pace of technology for the rest of my life. In the interests of not getting left behind, I’m trying to condition myself to have the stamina required of technology in the 21st century.
So the article Your Job: How to Stay Personally Relevant … Now and in the Future by marketing and PR blogger Steve Kayser got my attention last week. Steve presents a handy little acronym for remember the elements of relevance today:
Risk.
Experiment.
Listen & Learn.
Engage.
Value.
Attitude of Gratitude.
No to Negativity.
Time.
These characteristics of the cutting edge work for both the professional and personal spheres, though Steve approaches it from a personal level while I’ll look at business applications. So let’s take a look at these element, with an eye for how these lessons help us to grow in our professional SEO lives.
Risk is a necessary part of search engine optimization because it goes hand in hand with experimentation. Considering that Google and the other major engines aren’t handing over their algos any time soon, testing and practical research is the foundation of all SEO knowledge. At the same time, Google tells webmasters not to do anything with the sole intention of boosting rankings.
By that definition, SEO experimentation involves an inherent but necessary risk. Be smart about the risks you take — saving radical or irreversible tests for domains safe for burning — but never stifle your sense of curiosity and hypothesizing. Gain every competitive advantage that’s available by taking a risk to experiment.
While part of any SEO’s knowledge is gained from personal experience, the recommendations of search engine representatives, the expertise of SEO authorities, and the experiments of trusted community members plays a part as well. SEOs with an interest in staying up-to-date will actively engage the community to hear and learn the latest tactics and theories for how to market a site with the resources available.
Bruce Clay, Inc.’s SEOToolSet Training course is, IMHO, one of the best opportunities for search marketing learning and community engagement. This year the standard course and advanced certification course will be presented nearly every month in Simi Valley and once a quarter in Long Island, so reserve your seat today.
Trying to hit a moving target can feel frustratingly futile at times, but if you actively embrace positivity and reject negativity you’ll be in a much better position to stay lithe and nimble in the search space.
Similarly, members of the community often solicit input in the form of surveys, requests for contributions, and other feedback mechanisms. If you’re gaining knowledge from the community, do your best to give back as well. Participate yourself and use your network to spread the word as well — because we all stand to gain from a culture of openness and support.
I switched up the order of our acronym a bit to group these two elements together. Time is money, money is value, and there’s nothing quite as valuable as time. As Steve writes, “Time. It’s free. Yet priceless. Infinite – but there’s never enough of it.” Don’t undervalue your time and experience, and ration your time wisely, giving ample and necessary time to practical research, on-site optimization, reading, community engagement, and so on. The recipe for SEO success truly lies in keeping relevant.
Relevance: Good for SEO, Good for YOU was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.
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Relevance: Good for SEO, Good for YOU
The allure of working for yourself and working from home are two of the main upsides to being an entrepreneur and especially a web/tech entrepreneur. However, despite the glowing praise for the flexibility and convenience of working from home, one topic that often gets disregarded is the disconnection many “at home entrepreneurs” feel. While it is nice to be able to roll out of bed into the office in the mornings skipping any sort of morning commute, after a while, working for yourself means working by yourself and this can lead to a sense of disconnection from others. Here are a few ways to avoid this.
Find a Partner
I have been told by countless successful entrepreneurs to never pursue a venture unless you can find one other person who believes in it and is willing to invest their time and money into the idea. While having a partner undoubtedly complicates matters and cuts your ownership of the company in half, having someone to work with you is extremely effective in avoiding any sense of disconnection.
Having a partner who complements your strengths and weaknesses will help your company grow in its earlier stages and increase its chances of thriving in the marketplace for years to come. Unfortunately, finding the right business partner is a complicated process and a subject that hundreds of entrepreneurs and experts have discussed at length in countless articles and books.
Attend Conferences and Network
Every industry has its own conferences. Attending these conferences is a great way to meet like minded individuals with whom you can discuss business issues. Often times, it is hard to connect with people in day to day life as they don’t understand what exactly online entrepreneurs do; however, at conferences you can meet people with similar issues who “get you”.
A simple Google search will get you a list of major conferences in your industry which you can attend. From attending these conferences, you can establish connections with professionals in your area and can organize more informal, yet more frequent, local meet-ups. John’s frequent “Dot Com Phos” is a perfect example.
Talk to your “Statistics”
Often times for web entrepreneurs it comes down to statistics. How many people bought my product? How many people came to my blog? How many new users registered today? While all these stats are just numbers, there are people behind these numbers and taking the time to reach out and interact with these people will not only help you feel more connected, but will also improve your business.
Talking to customers will show you what you are doing right and what can be fixed to increase sales. Talking to blog readers or users will allow you to see what people like and don’t like about your website and discuss any possible adjustments that can be made.
Take a Break
While all of us work under heavy deadlines (even if they are ones we make up for ourselves) it is important to stop every once in a while and take a break. If you have some errands to run, go out and get them done. Eat out at lunch every once in a while or take a 1 hour break to go to the gym. Anything you can do to get away from the computer for a little while will help you stay focused when you are actually working.
Here is more information on why right now is the right time to start a business and how to take advantage of the timing. This post was written by Aditya Mahesh, founder of AMBeat.com, one of the web’s most popular entrepreneurship blogs.
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How To Overcome The Disconnection of Working Alone
Are you trying to get into the exciting and lucrative world of affiliate marketing but you don’t know where to start? Are you confused over all the terminology and you can’t figure out which affiliate network best suits your needs? Don’t worry. There’s help out there.
One site that wants to help you with your money-making journey is called Ace Affiliates. Over the course of this review, we’ll take a look at some of the resources that this site offers and how it can help you on your way to dot com mogul status.
Are you completely new to the world of affiliate marketing and you need to figure out what’s what? The people at Ace Affiliates were nice enough to put together an informative infographic that aims to explain affiliate marketing in simple and easy-to-understand terms.
You can take a few minutes to explore the infographic on your own. It will define the roles of the advertiser, publisher, and content network. It’ll walk you through the basic process of how you can make money with affiliate marketing. And it’ll explain the different payment schemes that affiliate offers may have.
Yes, a similar explanation can probably be found elsewhere on the Internet, but the graphic layout presented by Ace Affiliates makes the explanation a little easier to digest.
The information presented is very introductory, so it’ll be an old hat for intermediate and advanced publishers. For beginners, however, it can be a great place to start.
If you want to share the infographic with your own blog readers, Ace Affiliates has provided the embed code for you too.
So, now that you have a basic understanding of how affiliate marketing works, you need to find the right offers so you can start making some money. As you know, some companies have their own referral programs, but it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to manage so many accounts. That’s why it can oftentimes be better to use an affiliate network instead.
So, how can you decide which network (or networks) you want to use in your online money-making adventure? Well, you can turn to Ace Affiliates to find some affiliate program reviews too.
By going through these reviews, you can get a good sense of what to expect when you sign up with any of the highlighted networks. The most recent reviews are featured on the home page, but you can also look to the right sidebar for the best affiliate programs and the affiliate education center.
Here is the review that Ace Affiliates posted about Market Leverage and this is indicative of what you can expect from other reviews. You get ratings related to ease of use, reputation, security, customer service, commission rate, ease of payment, and an overall rating. Each section has a brief description and explanation too.
It’s also useful that you can see some core contact information for the network, payment threshold, payment frequency, average commission rate, average EPC, average conversion rate, and the availability of real-time stats.
For people interested in signing up with these different affiliate networks, I think some screenshots of the control panel would be very useful. I hope that Ace Affiliates considers including screenshots in the future, showing the user interface. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all.
Whether you’re looking for a brief explanation of affiliate marketing or you want some background research on networks that you are considering, Ace Affiliates seems like a good launching pad for your online career.
The information is clearly laid out and easy to digest. I just wish that the review section wasn’t quite so text-heavy.
CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT ACE AFFILIATES
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Ace Affiliates Explains Affiliate Marketing in Plain English
Blogging took the front and center stage at today’s Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. The day’s events were filled with sessions about blogging and blog blog marketing. The session I attended was call Monetizing blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO. The panel of speakers include Drew Bennett of BenSpark, John Carcutt of MediaWhiz, Tim Jones of The Real Tim Jones and Murray Newlands of Affiliate Heat. The panel was moderated by Kirs Jones of Pepperjam Network.
The panel talked a lot about getting traffic from search engines and how to optimize your blog to increase its search engine ranking. Some of the advice was really good, like when John Carcutt recommend you not to have the same name for a tag and blog category.
The second half of the session dealt with how to monetize the blog. Tim Jones hit it right on the head when he said you must treat your blog like a business if you want to make money from it. All the panelist offered some really good suggestions on different ways to monetize a blog.
The panel took questions from the audience after their presentation. Overall, a really good session and I’m glad I attended it. Next, I’m going to head on over to the Affiliate Meet Market and video the action. If you see me, make sure to say hi. You might end up in the video!
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Affiliate Summit West 2010 – Monetizing Blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO
En esta parte podrás poder cualquier cosa sobre ti ó sobre tu sitio, una pequeña introducción ó algo que desees hacerle saber a tus lectores. elsonar.es
Look out, Big Apple. Search Engine Strategies is coming to town
Moderator: Matt Van Wagner , President, Find Me Faster Speakers: Meagan Rochelle , Search Solutions Specialist, Microsoft Nicholas Ward , Product Manager, Range Online Media How many people are using Bing Cashback, Matt asks? About a quarter of the audience raises their hand. The rest are interested to find out how it might work for them.
The first big search conference of the new year, Search Marketing Expo West , is just around the bend. SMX West takes place March 2-5 in Santa Clara, California. Bruce Clay, Inc.
I’m a day late in climbing out from under the ever-piling heap called my feed reader — but hey, if Punxsutawney Phil can claw his way to the surface today, I can too. Here’s the search news from over the weekend through today, with a special focus on local and mobile news. Local Events Added to Bing Maps The Local Events application in Bing now features event listings
Oh happy, glorious, liberating Friday. We’re so glad you’ve come back! What’s in store for the recap today? Truth be told, I don’t even know