Archive for the 'Internet News' Category

Surviving The Holidays In Today’s Economy

Monday, November 24th, 2008

This is a busy time of year at a search-marketing firm. People are maximizing their advertising and refocusing their campaigns in order to reach the holiday shoppers. We build out a lot of specialized campaigns for the holiday season in order to meet the needs of our clients.

We are also seeing advertisers stop running campaigns due to the holidays or the economy or both. This is the biggest mistake you can make this time of year. I understand times are tough for a lot of companies and industries out there. However, there are some ways that you can cut down on spending without eliminating your advertising completely.

1) Don’t turn off ads. Even if you only run half of your regular budget you are better off than losing visibility altogether.

2) Reevaluate bid levels. Low positioning is better than nothing at all. You want to make sure you aren’t getting shut off mid-day due to your reduced budget. We have used this tactic for a few people looking for ways to cut costs and we have been pleasantly surprised by the results. It seems there are a lot of people out there pulling the plug on their advertising so your positioning might be higher than you think at those reduced bids.

3) Narrow your focus. This is a great way to get more bang for your buck when your bucks are limited. Restrict your spending to areas with a high ROI. You can also try pausing more general terms and running on more specific terms. You might loose a little bit of your brand awareness for those highly searched terms, but you are going to keep yourself profitable.

4) Give your campaign a holiday twist. Just because you don’t sell children’s clothing doesn’t mean that you can’t use the excitement of the holidays to draw people in.

5) Pricing! Pricing! Pricing! Between the economy scare and the upcoming holidays people are looking to cut costs anywhere they can. Try incorporating ads that are focused on reduced pricing or special offers. You don’t have to be giving things away, but as long as people think they are going to be saving they will be more likely to click.

Don’t forget the people who are waiting until the first of the year to purchase your product or service.

One thing we always see in paid advertising is delayed conversions. As an account manager here at Wpromote I look at daily conversions for my clients. I also look back at the end of the month to see how many conversions occurred from previous clicks. This happens all the time. People often browse sites, bookmark them and come back later to make a purchase. Generally people making big decisions such as signing up with a new insurance provider, redesigning their garage, or buying a $2,000 vacuum tend to think about it for sometime. This is something you are going to see in full effect through the month of December. Although people are more concerned with their holiday parties than they are with getting new flooring installed, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t thinking about which company they are going to use. Personal purchases slow down at the end of the year because spending is going toward holiday gifts. However, people are planning for all of the things they need to do or buy after the new year. You don’t want consumers making decisions on their upcoming purchases when you don’t have an online presence. Cut back spending, but don’t cut back altogether.

Remember, maintaining visibility in the search engines is important. You are going to loose current and potential customers if they are looking for you and can’t find you. Don’t let your competitors take advantage of your need to save money. Find a balance that allows you to cut costs, stay profitable and keep your name where people can find you. I hear Google is the place to be.

Happy holidays and happy advertising!

I Have Opinions Volume 2: How To Give Thanks

Friday, November 21st, 2008

It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Those “deficiency needs” are not to be taken for granted, but everyone is thankful for friends, family, food, and shelter. So i’m gonna dive right into the deep end and talk about what I’m really thankful for. I mean, if you won an Oscar, would you “Thank The Academy” or make a real statement with some one-armed pushups? With the holidays at heart and Maslow in mind, here’s a smattering of random people, places, and things I’m thankful for:

Judd Apatow. I’d say that this gentleman is responsible for roughly 73% of my laughter over the last year and a half. Freaks and Geeks was the victim of network hi-jinx; perhaps the same can be said of Undeclared. The success of 2005’s The 40 Year Old Virgin finally earned him some studio support, and he’s been turning out riotous comedies ever since. Since June 2007, Apatow has been involved in: Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Step Brothers (underrated), and Pineapple Express, amongst others! He also already has 4 movies lined up for 2009/2010: The Year One, Funny People, Get Him to the Greek, and, wait for it… GHOSTBUSTERS 3. The secret to Apatow’s success is hidden in plain view in the Freaks and Geeks series, where fans of the aforementioned films will recognize nearly every cast member; but you might have to look twice, they were so young!

Coffee. What a Devilish delight those dark little beans brew up! I can hardly function without my morning cup. All good things come at a price, and coffee is no exception; but when you are able to enjoy that perfect brew, there’s nothing better. Coffee lovers in Los Angeles would do well to visit Kings Road on Beverly Blvd and Intelligentsia on Sunset in Silverlake. You’d be hard pressed (pun intended) to find a better cup in this city!

iPhone 3G. My Razr lasted 3 long years, and weathered some abuse, but I was still ready to swear off cell phones all together this past summer. Somehow I ended up going the complete opposite direction and upgrading to the iPhone. I’m glad I did. These things are spectacular, and $199 is a bargain whether you think so or not!

Gossip Girl. The haters will hate and the rest of us will love. As far as I’m concerned, Josh Schwartz earned “bona fide genius” status with The OC, but for the non-believers, he’s still making his case every Monday night on the CW. Blaire Waldorf and Chuck Bass are the most compelling fictional characters in my memory. Speaking of Chuck, the show of the same name is another Schwartz production, and quite enteraining in its own right. OC fans will realize that it sort of reads like a Seth Cohen fantasy. Frankly, Schwartz might as well have cast Adam Brody for the lead instead of his doppelganger, Zachary Levi. Remember THIS?

The Santa Ana Winds. They bring dry, dusty, desert air to the coast and spread fires across the state, which is a bummer. But they also bring sunny 85 degree summer days in November! Plus, those offshore winds combine with seasonal swells for epic surf around here. It’s a bittersweet sentiment, but life is good when California’s burning.

Pumpkin products. My four autumns in Boston spoiled me with an astounding array of pumpkin treats. I still miss some of the more eccentric consumables, but even out here in the seasonless wasteland/paradise known as Los Angeles I can still find plenty of the orangey goodness. Pumpkin lattes, bagels, breads, muffins, scones, pancakes, ravioli, and the perennial favorite–pies–are all on the menu. You better believe I’m ordering them!

Deerhunter “Microcastle”. The best album of the season. I’m also thankful that I’ll be seeing them Tuesday night at the El Rey.

The New Beverly Cinema. The programming doesn’t seem to be as strong since Sherman passed in July 2007, but it’s still one of the best establishments in LA. I’m thankful that Sherman’s son stepped up to take over the business after his father passed, rather than letting another LA landmark close down. Unlike some of the fancier revival houses in LA, like the Egyptian and the Aero, the New Beverly is happy to show cult classics and all sorts of marginalized film favorites! For only $7, you can enjoy 2 classic films on the big screen! That’s probably the best value in LA.

…but enough about me, I wanna hear what YOU are thankful for!

How to Boost Affiliate Revenue Using eBay, Facebook, and TinyURL

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

I recently sat in on an Affiliate Marketing panel at Pubcon 2008 in Las Vegas and learned that now is the best time to be an affiliate marketer. I IM’d this to Scott, the Director of Performance Marketing at Wpromote, and he suggested I ask why this is so, especially with the recent downturns in the economy.


(note: taken using 12seconds.tv, hence only 12 seconds long…)
The thinking behind the announcement? As the traditional advertising world converges with the interactive marketing world and high-end video ads are being integrated into websites, affiliate marketers have more opportunities to become media outlets and get a piece of ever-expanding online marketing budgets.

With that being said, here is a great way to boost your affiliate revenue using filtered search results, affiliate links, and social media.

Monetizing witheBay logo

Try Searching for something on eBay. For my example, I used ‘guitars’. Here are some of the results:

eBay UNFILTERED Guitar search results

Notice how there are several products in here that no pro guitarist would really want, which wastes their time while searching.

If you use eBays ‘advanced search,’ you will start to see the URL changing and the results improving as you remove ‘unwanted’ results.

For my query on ‘Ernie Ball Guitars,’ initially the results were about 300 items, many of which were garbage results of products such as promo ads, picks, strings and other things that weren’t actual guitars. After carefully adding negative keywords such as strings, picks, straps, and chord book, the results were streamlined and my search returned 109 results, almost all of which were actual guitars for sale.

Now Make the Affiliate Link

Next I went into the eBay Partner pages and created an affiliate link to make sure I get credit for anyone who purchases from my filtered results.

eBay screen shot

eBay screen shot

You use the link generator to create the link:

The end result is something like this:

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/***-***-******-0/1?type=4&campid=*********&toolid=10001&customid=&mpre=http%3A%2%2Fshop.ebay.com%2Fitems%2F_W0QQ_dmdZ1QQ_dmptZGuitarQQ_sopZ12%3F_nkw%3DErnie%2BBall%2BGuitar%2B-strings%2B-picks%2B-trucker%2B-hat%2B-pick%2B-conditioner%2B-slide%2B-slides%2B-straps%2B-how%2B-chord%2B-book%2B-promo%2B-cables%2B-cable%2B-pedal%2B-volume%2B-strap%2B-nylon%2B-ad%2B-hammett%2B-hybrid%2B-slinky%2B-string%26_sacat%3D0%26_fromfsb%3D%26_trksid%3Dm270.l1313%26_odkw%3DErnie%2BBall%2BGuitar%2B-strings%2B-picks%2B-conditioner%2B-slide%2B-slides%2B-straps%2B-how%2B-chord%2B-book%2B-promo%2B-cables%2B-cable%2B-pedal%2B-volume%2B-strap%2B-nylon%2B-ad%2B-hammett%2B-hybrid%2B-slinky%2B-string%26_osacat%3D0

Now You Place Your Link - But 1st You Have to Shorten It

Well there are several places I have at my disposal to place guitar-related links. Any of my blogs, near the top of  my guitar-related blog (guitartechnician.com), or to the Facebook group of which I am an officer, “Guitar Shredders Unite!”.

Guitar Shredders Unite Facebook Group

Guitar Shredders Unite Facebook Group - Click to Join!

So what’s the problem? That huge link above is likely not to fit everywhere you want to post it (WYSIWYG editors, for example), and it’s size alone makes people suspicious - is it a scam? An affiliate link? Is clicking on this link going to infect my computer with a virus?

The solution is to shorten up the link with Tiny Url.

Using Tiny Url, I was able to get clean url slugs for my posts, and now my link looks like this:

http://tinyurl.com/ernieball

The link above can be posted anywhere. When someone clicks, they will get filtered eBay results. If a purchase is made as a result, the affiliate makes money.

Some examples of links I’ve placed on my blog:

ebay guitar search links

eBay guitar search links

In the sidebar of the guitartechnician.com, I have affiliate links to ESP Guitars, Ernie Ball and Mesa/Boogie eBay search results that don’t appear super spammy and provide the user with great filtered auction results.

Best of luck with your affiliate earning, and don’t take all the good tinyURLs!

Your friendly neighborhood SEO Rockstar SEO

P.S. Here are some cool pics from PubCon…enjoy!

This is the room where they held the Affiliate Marketing panel.


This is the private SeoMOZ party.
A bunch of SEO’s sitting around a table playing “Search Spam.”

Good times.

Why I Started Paying Attention to Internet Ads (aka How Facebook Changed My Life)

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Having worked in online advertising for almost five years, I’ve become accustomed to ignoring most of the ads I see online, whether they come in banner, pop-up, or text form. Don’t even get me started on spam e-mail – I used to write it. It was complicated and lucrative. It took wild creativity and a lot of risk.

The underbelly of email marketing

A thrilling field, for sure.  I came in each morning eager to see the results of last night’s e-mail drop – did I manage to increase conversions by improving the subject line? Did the text only drop outperform last week’s? Did that whitelist we sent that shower gel offer to convert or was it a waste of a good list?

We labored daily to analyze the results of hundreds of email drops, making adjustments to our metrics as needed and keeping in mind that we weren’t comparing apples to apples. It was nice to see the results of your work in numerical form – write a persuasive email and make a grip of cash. Improve a struggling offer, and the sales guy who booked it would get a crazed email from the client asking if it was possible I could write for them (and only them) full-time.

We laughed.

Eventually the shady practices that propelled the industry started to piss enough people off, and the business model of the company I worked with came undone. I moved on to less offensive (albeit still troubling) pastures – writing for reality TV – and the immediate benefit came in the form of friends who finally stopped harassing me for filling their inbox and junk mail folders with garbage. It was nice.

What Facebook is doing differently

But I digress…take a look at this:

It’s an example of the type of “user-generated” engagement ads being displayed to Facebook users. Normally I’d ignore them but lately I’ve noticed they “come” from friends, rather than from a sponsor. Ads will read something like “Kathy just became a fan of Clickbank” and show Kathy’s photo, or “Violet just joined the group “Women in Advertising” and feature Violet’s photo.  Hmm.

The beauty of relevant advertising - it works

Many of the ads are business related (I belong to several entrepreneurial networks), some are about politics (lots of political groups), and others are about art, music, religion, and world affairs (see my Facebook profile…oh wait, you can’t…it’s private). 

I have to admit, I’m impressed. Facebook has got me down. If they happen to serve me an ad I don’t like, I can click the ‘thumbs-down’ icon on the lower right hand of the ad and let them know the ad is not for me. I’ve actually begun rating the ads just to generate new ones. It’s via Facebook ads I’ve discovered two useful networking groups, a new band I absolutely love, and a play I’m now covering for an online rag. I think sometimes I log on to Facebook just to check for new ads??

I’m not sure. And that’s why it’s so brilliant.

Mark Zuckerberg, you’re my hero (well, at least one of them…).