Most relevant news, techniques and tools for authors looking to promote their books inexpensively off and online. We refer to and utilize many of the Guerrilla Marketing techniques and have created some of our own geared specifically to book promotion and marketing. Our website is the ground where we put into practice our marketing efforts. Membership is FREE.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

What Happened to the Adsense Template Page?


What Happened to the Adsense Template Page?
I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to [...]

Arielle Ford, Publicist biography
Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.

$10,652.00 in Bonuses for Shawn Casey's "How To Make An Absolute Fortune..."

How to Get Your Book Published: Windows Media Video
Find out how Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS


RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS

How does EzineArticles.com, one of the largest websites to help you syndicate your content, use RSS for their marketing?

To answer this question, we interviewed Christopher Knight for the 2007 edition of the RSS marketing e-book (coming shortly). But if you want to know more, click here to read Christopher's summary.

BTW - did you know that EzineArticles.com publishes more than 40,000 RSS feeds?

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Reaching Employees and Customers with Blogging and Podcasting


Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Nielsen on the "Usability Divide"

Nielsen on the "Usability Divide"
Here's an excerpt from Digital Divide: The Three Stages (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox): Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of the available services are too difficult for them to understand. Almost 40% of the...

Here's an excerpt from Digital Divide: The Three Stages (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox):

Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free. Many others can use computers, but don't achieve the modern world's full benefits because most of the available services are too difficult for them to understand.

Almost 40% of the population has lower literacy skills, and yet few websites follow the guidelines for writing for low-literacy users. Even government sites that target poorer citizens are usually written at a level that requires a university degree to comprehend. The British government has done some good work on simplifying much of its direct.gov.uk site information, but even it requires at least a high school education to easily read.

Lower literacy is the Web's biggest accessibility problem, but nobody cares about this massive user group.

This really is a critical problem. It's one reason why I argue for keeping readability levels as low as possible. It's not dumbing-down the text—it's opening it up to people who can use it if only they can understand it.

Nielsen's post has a link to his guideline for writing for low-literacy users. I also recommend Readability.info, which can give you several good ways to assess your text readability. You can also find a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list, down in the left-hand column.



100 million sites
CNN.com reports that the Web now has 100 million sites. The report is based on a story in Netcraft, a site I will include in the Webwriting Resources list. I suspect we will hit 250 million sites before we realize what a profound revolution Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched upon an unsuspecting world back in 1989....

CNN.com reports that the Web now has 100 million sites. The report is based on a story in Netcraft, a site I will include in the Webwriting Resources list.

I suspect we will hit 250 million sites before we realize what a profound revolution Sir Tim Berners-Lee launched upon an unsuspecting world back in 1989.



Links to the New Edition
Writing for the Web 3.0 is now officially available. I've placed links to Self-Counsel Press in the right-hand column. If you're in the US, you can buy the book through the lower link; if you're in Canada or elsewhere in the world, the upper link is the one you want. If you're in the UK, you can also order the book through the Roundhouse Group. In the next few days...

Writing for the Web 3.0 is now officially available. I've placed links to Self-Counsel Press in the right-hand column. If you're in the US, you can buy the book through the lower link; if you're in Canada or elsewhere in the world, the upper link is the one you want. If you're in the UK, you can also order the book through the Roundhouse Group.

In the next few days I'll add some resources here that are available as a CD in the book...but only for PC users. So Mac users can download those resources here.



Poynter Online's EyeTrack07 Attacks the Myth of Short Attention Spans
I haven't had time to read it yet. But here's the story from Poynter Online - EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans. Excerpt: You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C. Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly. And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is...

I haven't had time to read it yet. But here's the story from Poynter Online - EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans. Excerpt:

You can't get much more basic than the lead finding of Poynter's EyeTrack07 study, presented this morning to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington, D.C.

Readers select stories of particular interest and then read them thoroughly.

And there's a twist: The reading-deep phenomenon is even stronger online than in print.

At a time when readers are assumed to have short attention spans, especially those who read online, this qualifies as news.

That was the predominant behavior of roughly 600 test subjects -- 70 percent of whom said they read the news in print or online four times a week. Their eye movements were tracked in 15-minute reading sessions of broadsheet, tabloid and online publications. Evidence from these sessions revealed how long readers spend with the stories they pick, as well as a host of other details about reading patterns.

This should be a very interesting report.



From Web 1.0 to Web 3.0?
Via the International Herald Tribune, a long and interesting article about where Sir Tim Berners-Lee wants the Web to go: A 'more revolutionary' Web. Excerpt: Just when the ideas behind "Web 2.0" are starting to enter into the mainstream, the mass of brains behind the World Wide Web is introducing pieces of what may end up being called Web 3.0. "Twenty years from now, we'll look back and say this...

Via the International Herald Tribune, a long and interesting article about where Sir Tim Berners-Lee wants the Web to go: A 'more revolutionary' Web. Excerpt:

Just when the ideas behind "Web 2.0" are starting to enter into the mainstream, the mass of brains behind the World Wide Web is introducing pieces of what may end up being called Web 3.0.

"Twenty years from now, we'll look back and say this was the embryonic period," said Tim Berners-Lee, 50, who established the programming language of the Web in 1989 with colleagues at CERN, the European science institute.

Very much worth reading.



BlogWrite for CEOs
Debbie Weil is the author of BlogWrite for CEOs, which looks like a very useful resource—complete with a list of CEOs' blogs and some free downloadable resources. I'm putting a link to it in Webwriting Resources as well....

Debbie Weil is the author of BlogWrite for CEOs, which looks like a very useful resource—complete with a list of CEOs' blogs and some free downloadable resources. I'm putting a link to it in Webwriting Resources as well.



A new French-language resource
I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.) This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at...

I've belatedly discovered écrire pour le web, a blog produced, I believe, in Belgium. Even with my rudimentary French I can see it's a good site, and I've put a link to it in the Webwriting Resources list. (It's way down at the bottom of the list, thanks to its lower-case text.)

This raises another point: staying up to date. If you're running a site that deals with webwriting (at least in part), please get in touch. It's time to do a serious overhaul of the links and resources available here. Non-English sites especially welcome!



Previewing EyeTrack 07
At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt: A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first...

At Poynter Online, Sara Quinn has an article worth reading: Looking back at EyeTrack is actually a look ahead at the latest of these Poynter studies. Obviously webwriters should understand how people read online, and EyeTrack 07 will therefore be of importance to us all. Excerpt:

A systematic look -- that's what Poynter EyeTrack07 is all about. It's the largest of four eye-tracking studies conducted by Poynter and the first with the distinct focus of comparing print and online news reading.

We've almost finished analyzing the data. Key findings will be released at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in Washington, D.C., on March 28. The full debut of the findings will take place April 10 to 12 at a Poynter conference in St. Petersburg, Fla.

To give you a little background, this was a test of 600 regular readers of news. That's a large number in the research world, and it was necessary in order to get what we needed. We wanted to look through readers' eyes as they read live publications to see what attracted and held their attention. A second part of the study involved six versions of a prototype and an exit interview, which gave us insight into comprehension, and retention of information.

Using eye-tracking equipment we noted the number of times readers viewed more than 350 specific elements, such as headlines, photos, cutlines, stories, graphics, blogs, listings and ads.

The data totals more than 102,000 "eye-stopping events." That's research speak, but it means we've watched every eye movement of 600 readers over the course of about 9,000 minutes of reading 30 days' worth of news publication.

We conducted the study in four U.S. markets, working with the St. Petersburg Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune in Minnesota, the Philadelphia Daily News in Pennsylvania and the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colo. Each subject read the actual publication for 15 minutes, then read a prototype for another five minutes.

You may reserve a copy of the EyeTrack07 report and find more details about the upcoming conference at eyetrack.poynter.org. Go there to get a glimpse of the project in a video as well, while we continue to crunch the data.



Sir Tim Warns Us About Online Fraud
Via the Guardian Unlimited: Creator of web warns of fraudsters and cheats. Excerpt: The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian last night that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness. His creation...

Via the Guardian Unlimited: Creator of web warns of fraudsters and cheats. Excerpt:

The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian last night that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness.

His creation has transformed the way millions of people work, do business, and entertain themselves.

But he warns that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way".

He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information.

Sir Tim believes devotees of blogging sites take too much information on trust: "The blogging world works by people reading blogs and linking to them. You're taking suggestions of what you read from people you trust. That, if you like, is a very simple system, but in fact the technology must help us express much more complicated feelings about who we'll trust with what."

The next generation of the internet needs to be able to reassure users that they can establish the original source of the information they digest.



Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium
Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt: Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little...

Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt:

Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little brat of online encyclopedias.

Sanger is staging an electronic coup d'état with a new wiki called Citizendium, to be launched early in the new year. But there's a twist: the site will start out as a mirror image of the English version of Wikipedia through a process called "forking."

By making a replica of Wikipedia, Sanger hopes to attract a bevy of experts to the project, who will then refine the wobbly content pulled from Wikipedia's infinite pages to create a resource that is authoritative and reliable. ("We descend upon their content, red pens in hand and start our own new community," he recently wrote.)

"On the day of launch, we have over 1,000 people ready to get to work, and a large portion of them are professors, graduate students, research scientists, legal scholars, technical thinkers and assorted other intellectuals."

Question is, how far will his highfalutin model go in the unruly hurly-burly of cyberspace, where the wisdom of the crowds rules the day?

I've put a link to Citizendium in the Webwriting Resources list, and the article itself has a link as well.



A Freelance Job in Vancouver
This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest: The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December...

This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest:

The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December 14, 2006 (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.); turn-around time for reports is three working days.

To learn more about our company please visit The Conference Publishers.

If you are available and interested, please contact Biljana Zelenovic at biljana@theconferencepublishers.com or 1-800-265-3973 x226.



A Few Positions Have Opened up at Content Site Builder

Friday, March 30, 2007

Keys to Increasing Website Traffic

Keys to Increasing Website Traffic
The life and blood of any online business is one simple word �traffic�. It�s your life and blood. Let�s face it, it�s quite simple these days to build a website, even without any HTML knowledge. It�s... [Author: Mark Taylor - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

Where To Find Free Images For Your Web Marketing Campaign
The Web is flooded with million images. Try Google image search or my favorite Picsearch.com and know what I mean. You are tempted to grab the best images and use it for your website. And of course y... [Author: Roz Volv - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

SEO or PPC - Deciding Which Type Of Search Engine Marketing Your Business Needs
Before you get started with the Search Engines you should decide which of the two major Search Engine marketing strategies will work best for your site. This will help you to stay on track and not wa... [Author: Chris Taylor - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

SEO: Gaining Top Placement In The Warm Markets
Search engines become smarter by the minute. It is no longer the sheer placement of numerous keywords on a single page. There is the correct placement of anchored text, the specific Meta tags, the wa... [Author: Jeffrey Greer - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

News vs Entertainment : a PR crisis?
Desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations.

Gerald Baron, Founder and CEO, PIER System/AudienceCentral; Author, "Now Is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News" made some pithy comments about the 'news as entertainment' trend and its effect on PR in today's Daily Dog.

What's wrong with this trend?

  • Too little money is available for good reporting.
  • Wall Street expectations destroying news organizations.
  • Audiences switching rapidly to new media for which there is insufficient revenue to support real journalism.
  • The line between amateurs and professional journalists is blurred and it is likely the public largely doesn't care.
  • News is entertainment and needs to compete on the basis of what the audience wants—not what is good journalism or what should be covered.

"Public relations professionals need to understand that these desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations," says Bacon. "They need to be able to respond fast, to be aggressive in attacking misinformation and bad reporting and most importantly, they need to grab onto the incredible opportunities they have to talk directly to the people whose opinion about the organization matters most to their future. Talk quick, talk with complete honestly and talk directly."

How does a web content strategy figure in all this?

"Today's Internet tools including virtual communication centers, blogs, and communicator-controlled websites all make that possible. The desperate media environment makes it essential," advises Bacon.  And he is 100% correct..

How do you do it?

If you do not yet have a section of your website that can be controlled by the communication department this should be a priority.  The tools available today make this a no-brainer.

RSS enable this section of the site, so that your content can be syndicated across the Net.  Feeds also allow you to reach subcribers fast...

Use RSS feeds and other tools to monitor the blogs and conversations so you have your finger on the pulse and can pick up and respond to any comments or issues right away.



Web Promotion
The main methods of online marketing are the following Web Optimization The professional SEO services are the first the and in most efficient method of online marketing. It would be ideal that the... [Author: Oana Olariu - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Why To Improve Website Ranking?
With the increase in the number of internet users all across the world, online businesses are definitely on a great raise. Even in emerging markets like Brazil, China, India; the usage of internet is... [Author: Darren Dunner - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

A Quick Guide To Web Directories
If you are a seasoned Internet marketer, then it is common knowledge that submitting to web directories can dramatically increase your page rank. If you are a newbie webmaster, then you might be quit... [Author: Karl Turnbull - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Telcos Fail to Capitalize on Mobile Web 2.0
Telecoms companies are failing to make the most of the growing popularity of the online information-sharing services of "Web 2.0", according to new research 'Web re-loaded: Driving convergence in the real world.' by global consultancy Arthur D. Little.

This new report places users and user generated content in the spotlight yet again.  Yet it seems US Telcos have not yet got the Web 2.0 message.

"In order to harness and monetize Web 2.0 the Telcos will have to rapidly address the needs of this community" says Martyn Roetter, Director of Arthur D. Little's US TIME. "Younger Europeans are already showing their readiness to interact on the move, with 38% of them accessing email from mobile devices, while Google launched Gmail for mobile in November last year. Telecommunications businesses now need to offer access to the established web 2.0 services, for both communication and for the fulfillment of their wider social needs while on the move."

The dilemma Telcos face is whether they should build their own Web 2.0 platforms or engage with established sites such as flickr etc, says the report.

One good example of collaboraiton is the Pontiac Underground site that partnered with Yahoo! and now offers access to all the Yahoo social media sites in one branded place.

Whatever they do, they should do it soon. the race goes to the swift and The Cluetrain is not waiting for the laggers.

.



How Google Video Search Engine can Solve 2 Major Website Owner's Problems
What is the solution to #1. Getting your site indexed in Google, and #2. Generating quality traffic to your website? Answer: Use the awesome power of video. When Google bought out YouTube for 1.67 ... [Author: Jeff Davis - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

Broadband is Holding Back Web 2.0 Use in Southern Africa
Forward thinking agencies and corporates attend Web PR +

We had 70 attendees in Cape Town and 60 in Johannesburg at the Web PR + conference.

The Cape Town audience was more independents and bloggers and techie types, while the Joburg crowd was more agency and PR related.  As one blogger who attended both sessions remarked the difference in the audience led to a very different conference - as it was a very interactive event.

Louise Marsland, editor of Biz Community, told me that it was one of the most emjoyable conferences she had attended -not just a platform to push services or products, but a genuine sharing of information and ideas.

The biggest drawback to adoption of Web 2.0 and Web PR in South Africa is the lack of connectivity and the cost of broadband.  But when they finally get the second network operator and broadband becomes affordable, it will arrive in a rush.

Good to see both innovators like BMW and the staid old financial institutions attending.



Disney's Content Strategy to Reach Moms Online
Entertainment Behemoth takes the needs of their online audience to heart.

disney online resource site for parents momsMoms are increasingly turning to the Internet for answers to everything from problems with teething babies to financing college. Based on research into their online audience Disney is launching a new website aimed at providing these answers the AP reports. 

Web-savvy and 32-million strong, U.S. mothers spend almost as much time online as women as a group, according to eMarketer's new report, "Moms Online: Parenting With Web 2.0."

And they're not just on children and parenting sites. The biggest opportunity for marketers targeting moms online is social networking sites, says the report.

Disney has plunged right in to this space with their new website Family.com

Family intends to be a one-stop site for parents, especially mothers, providing everything from Internet search to user-generated articles on key topics such as education and food, and, eventually, a 'ParentPedia,' a compilation of information on 1,000 topics that can be expanded by users.

Parents have become a larger part of Disney's online audience, accounting for nearly half of the 25 million unique visits per month to the Disney.com site, the company said. Most of those are moms. 

Disney surveyed 30,000 mothers over the past year to find out what they are looking for online. The openness of the new site along with trusted content vouched for by Disney is what moms say they want..

The site will be in beta till the summer.



Smart Social Media Thinking
How to corral that free-wheeling user-generated content

pontiac social media sitePrevailing wisdom says you can't control the message anymore.  User-generated content has a life of it's own and any attempt to make it into a marketing or PR vehicle will backfire.

And have we not seen some spectaular examples of doing it wrong?

Pontiac's social media site created in tandem with Yahoo is a much smarter approach. Their new community hub on Yahoo is designed to tap into the "street-level" energy of fans from all its active and retired brands by uniting and introducing the hundreds of offline and online groups already in existence. No overt marketing will be present - the idea is for it to be found and spread organically. .

Now there's a thought - gather up all the consumer generated buzz already going on and offer it a home. Make it possible for all your evangelists to interact and find each other. Give them more social media tools so it's easier for them to  create and share content .

Underground allows users to share photos and videos of cars using Flickr and Yahoo Video. A Yahoo Answers zone enables knowledge sharing. An aggregated list of Pontiac clubs in the physical world and on Yahoo Groups allows users to connect offline and online. An opinion poll, Pontiac-hosted blog "Inside Track" and the "Pontiac Informer," an aggregation tool for blogs and news, round out the offering.

Now that's smart marketing and PR in the Web 2.0 world.



How to Optimize your Blog for Search Engines
Blogs are naturally search engine friendly and optimizing your blog for search engines is really no different than optimizing your website. Here are some suggestions to get you started. Back Links:... [Author: Rose DesRochers - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Do You Know the Fastest Way to Get a High Page Ranking?
There are millions upon millions of websites on the internet. The majority of these site's have poor page rankings. Is your site one of them? Would you like to increase your page ranking? Silly quest... [Author: Terry Morris - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Process on Optimizing your Site through Keywords
There are a lot of things to analyze on your site before you start optimizing your site. Such things are your site overview, nature of business, home page, site dimension and number of pages, product... [Author: Kristine Joy Francisco - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

Why I haven't been blogging this week
I am in Cape Town visiting family

Camps Bay Cape townAs I sit at a pavement cafe in Camps Bay drinking  red Africa tea and hanging out with my son and his family, blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

But tomorrow the nose goes back to the grindstone.  I am speaking at the WebPR conference here in Cape Town.  then I am off to Johannesburg to do another one March 2nd. I will be back in LA on March 8th..



Generating Traffic To Your Myspace Website
MySpace is an exciting online community where members can make new friends, reconnect with old friends, network or even find potential romantic partners. While there are some MySpace members who join... [Author: David Riewe - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

New York ProBlogger Meetup - There are Prizes!


New York ProBlogger Meetup - There are Prizes!
We’ve arrived in New York after a few great days at the Underground Seminar in Washington DC where I was privileged enough to speak and had a great time meeting some wonderful internet marketers (I learned a lot - but will talk about that when I get home in April). ProBlogger Meetup in New York Update [...]

How to Leverage the Traffic of an A-List Blog
This Guest Post was written by Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home. When I look back over the last 11 months of how my own blog has grown, it s safe to say that the person who has had the most influence in my traffic and growth has been Darren. Getting to meet him at Elite Retreat [...]

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

The Future of Text Online

The Future of Text Online
At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?. The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover....

At Poynter Online, Guillermo E. Franco has an interesting interview with Chris Nodder of the Nielsen Norman Group: What is the Future of Text Online?.

The story also has a link to Jakob Nielsen's own useit.com page, which looks increasingly old-fashioned. The content is great, but the layout and typography need a makeover.



News vs Entertainment : a PR crisis?
Desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations.

Gerald Baron, Founder and CEO, PIER System/AudienceCentral; Author, "Now Is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News" made some pithy comments about the 'news as entertainment' trend and its effect on PR in today's Daily Dog.

What's wrong with this trend?

  • Too little money is available for good reporting.
  • Wall Street expectations destroying news organizations.
  • Audiences switching rapidly to new media for which there is insufficient revenue to support real journalism.
  • The line between amateurs and professional journalists is blurred and it is likely the public largely doesn't care.
  • News is entertainment and needs to compete on the basis of what the audience wants—not what is good journalism or what should be covered.

"Public relations professionals need to understand that these desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations," says Bacon. "They need to be able to respond fast, to be aggressive in attacking misinformation and bad reporting and most importantly, they need to grab onto the incredible opportunities they have to talk directly to the people whose opinion about the organization matters most to their future. Talk quick, talk with complete honestly and talk directly."

How does a web content strategy figure in all this?

"Today's Internet tools including virtual communication centers, blogs, and communicator-controlled websites all make that possible. The desperate media environment makes it essential," advises Bacon.  And he is 100% correct..

How do you do it?

If you do not yet have a section of your website that can be controlled by the communication department this should be a priority.  The tools available today make this a no-brainer.

RSS enable this section of the site, so that your content can be syndicated across the Net.  Feeds also allow you to reach subcribers fast...

Use RSS feeds and other tools to monitor the blogs and conversations so you have your finger on the pulse and can pick up and respond to any comments or issues right away.



Teleseminars with Ellen Britt: Audio File Posted
If you missed the Blogging and Beyond show last Thursday, Denise has just posted it on the site. We interviewed Ellen Britt of Marketing Qi about her tremendous success with teleseminars and how you can use this low cost tool...

Becoming a Book Blog
After weeks of work, the third edition of Writing for the Web is nearly completed. It's a far more extensive revision than I'd expected, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Not only is much of the print content changed, expanded, and updated, but the book will contain a CD with scores of links—a kind of electronic index, with added links on relevant topics. In addition, this site will become...

After weeks of work, the third edition of Writing for the Web is nearly completed. It's a far more extensive revision than I'd expected, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Not only is much of the print content changed, expanded, and updated, but the book will contain a CD with scores of links—a kind of electronic index, with added links on relevant topics.

In addition, this site will become a kind of book blog, providing still more updates and links. So if you find something in the book that you don't understand or like, you can fire off an email or a comment, and I'll try to explain myself.

Most textbooks now include websites created by the publisher to supply extra materials. Those sites, however, tend to be permanent and unchanging. As the blog for Writing for the Web 3.0, this site will change almost daily.



Smart Social Media Thinking
How to corral that free-wheeling user-generated content

pontiac social media sitePrevailing wisdom says you can't control the message anymore.  User-generated content has a life of it's own and any attempt to make it into a marketing or PR vehicle will backfire.

And have we not seen some spectaular examples of doing it wrong?

Pontiac's social media site created in tandem with Yahoo is a much smarter approach. Their new community hub on Yahoo is designed to tap into the "street-level" energy of fans from all its active and retired brands by uniting and introducing the hundreds of offline and online groups already in existence. No overt marketing will be present - the idea is for it to be found and spread organically. .

Now there's a thought - gather up all the consumer generated buzz already going on and offer it a home. Make it possible for all your evangelists to interact and find each other. Give them more social media tools so it's easier for them to  create and share content .

Underground allows users to share photos and videos of cars using Flickr and Yahoo Video. A Yahoo Answers zone enables knowledge sharing. An aggregated list of Pontiac clubs in the physical world and on Yahoo Groups allows users to connect offline and online. An opinion poll, Pontiac-hosted blog "Inside Track" and the "Pontiac Informer," an aggregation tool for blogs and news, round out the offering.

Now that's smart marketing and PR in the Web 2.0 world.



A Little Light Housekeeping
Writing for the Web 3.0 will be published in a few days, so I've spent some time updating and reorganizing this site. Many of the links had rotted, and the site was overdue for some new resources. So if you explore a little, you'll find several new links in Webwriting Resources and Web Writers and Editors. If you know of good sites, let me know and I'll be glad to...

Writing for the Web 3.0 will be published in a few days, so I've spent some time updating and reorganizing this site. Many of the links had rotted, and the site was overdue for some new resources.

So if you explore a little, you'll find several new links in Webwriting Resources and Web Writers and Editors. If you know of good sites, let me know and I'll be glad to add them.

Once the third edition is available online from Self-Counsel Press, I'll create a link to the publisher's site. I'll also add a number of new resources available on the book's CD—but the CD works only with PCs. So Mac users will have to download those items here.



Telcos Fail to Capitalize on Mobile Web 2.0
Telecoms companies are failing to make the most of the growing popularity of the online information-sharing services of "Web 2.0", according to new research 'Web re-loaded: Driving convergence in the real world.' by global consultancy Arthur D. Little.

This new report places users and user generated content in the spotlight yet again.  Yet it seems US Telcos have not yet got the Web 2.0 message.

"In order to harness and monetize Web 2.0 the Telcos will have to rapidly address the needs of this community" says Martyn Roetter, Director of Arthur D. Little's US TIME. "Younger Europeans are already showing their readiness to interact on the move, with 38% of them accessing email from mobile devices, while Google launched Gmail for mobile in November last year. Telecommunications businesses now need to offer access to the established web 2.0 services, for both communication and for the fulfillment of their wider social needs while on the move."

The dilemma Telcos face is whether they should build their own Web 2.0 platforms or engage with established sites such as flickr etc, says the report.

One good example of collaboraiton is the Pontiac Underground site that partnered with Yahoo! and now offers access to all the Yahoo social media sites in one branded place.

Whatever they do, they should do it soon. the race goes to the swift and The Cluetrain is not waiting for the laggers.

.



Things To Do In NYC After a Conference
There is a bronze mural on the side wall of the fire station at Ground Zero dedicated to the fallen heroes and those left standing. I couldn't help but shed a few tears; it's an eery feeling to remember the...

BlogWrite for CEOs
Debbie Weil is the author of BlogWrite for CEOs, which looks like a very useful resource—complete with a list of CEOs' blogs and some free downloadable resources. I'm putting a link to it in Webwriting Resources as well....

Debbie Weil is the author of BlogWrite for CEOs, which looks like a very useful resource—complete with a list of CEOs' blogs and some free downloadable resources. I'm putting a link to it in Webwriting Resources as well.


Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium


Beyond Wikipedia: Citizendium
Via The Tyee, an article webwriters should read: Beyond Wikipedia. Excerpt: Larry Sanger doesn't trust the wisdom of the crowd, so he's no big fan of Wikipedia. But he's not like the others who get their kicks pooh-poohing the all-powerful (but flawed) wiki: Sanger had a huge hand in creating it. These days, however, he's doing his best to make it something future generations remember only as the troubled little...

Was I Ahead of Myself?
When my publisher asked for a third edition of my book, I suggested calling it "3.0" as if it were a piece of software. (Well, it's better than "Geeks' Edition," which was the second edition.) Now I seem to have anticipated the Next Big Thing, according to this story in the New York Times: Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense. Excerpt: From the billions of documents that form...

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Small Town Redneck Country Girl

Small Town Redneck Country Girl
There was a small town country girl who had a passion for making gifts and giving them to anyone who wanted them. She didn’t do it for the attention. She handed out the gifts in a private area, outside of the public eye. She did not give the gifts to hear words of thanks or [...]

The Long and the Short of Media
Poynter is out with their latest Eye Tracking study. In a nutshell, they track how people interact with news in different formats. They found that people read farther into into online stories (77%) more than they do when perusing print...

Thursday, March 29, 2007

A Little Light Housekeeping


A Little Light Housekeeping
Writing for the Web 3.0 will be published in a few days, so I've spent some time updating and reorganizing this site. Many of the links had rotted, and the site was overdue for some new resources. So if you explore a little, you'll find several new links in Webwriting Resources and Web Writers and Editors. If you know of good sites, let me know and I'll be glad to...

An Intellectual Property Issue
Judy Pokras (vegwriter@aol.com) has posted a letter to the Online Writing list, and she's given me permission to pass it along: I've been selling an e-book (of raw vegan Thanksgiving recipes) that clearly says on it that buyers don't have the right to distribute the information in the book. One of the buyers (a woman in New York, whose name and address I have) posted many of the book's recipes...

This Blog Has Been Nominated for a Litty Award!
How fun! I got an e-mail message over the weekend letting me know that my blog has been nominated for a Litty Award by the Book Chronicle blog. Regardless of whether I wind up winning one of the categories, I...

A Freelance Job in Vancouver
This just arrived via the mail list of the Canadian Association of Journalists, and I hasten to pass it along. If you're a freelance writer in the Vancouver area, this could be of interest: The Conference Publishers is seeking freelance writers to cover the 2006 National Forum on Emergency Preparedness and Response in Vancouver. Writers are needed to produce 1800 word summaries of a pandemic flu exercise scheduled for December...

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS

RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS

How does EzineArticles.com, one of the largest websites to help you syndicate your content, use RSS for their marketing?

To answer this question, we interviewed Christopher Knight for the 2007 edition of the RSS marketing e-book (coming shortly). But if you want to know more, click here to read Christopher's summary.

BTW - did you know that EzineArticles.com publishes more than 40,000 RSS feeds?

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Will Yahoo! Pipes Increase Content Theft?

First of all, I was want to emphasize again that I strongly believe that Yahoo! Pipes is a dream come true for marketers, finally offering us a tool to easily conduct business intelligence and create RSS Radars.

However, the more you think of it, the more obvious all the dangers become obvious.

Sure, these were here before, but never before have they been accessible on a mass scale, for free, and with such ease of use.

Just consider it ...

Yahoo! Pipes gives anyone, with some time on their hands to learn how it works, the power to remix, filter and manipulate third-party content. In essence this means that you can easily take someone elses RSS feed and repurpose their content to best suit your needs and at the same time ignoring the needs of the publisher who is investing time, money and other resources into his content creation.

1. Creating Third-Party RSS Feeds with Your Standalone RSS Ads

Let's get started with something easy. Yahoo! Pipes allows you to combine any amount of XML data sources and filter them to create an output that best matches your needs.

For example, you could take 100 RSS feeds that talk about search engine marketing, combine them, deduplicate the posts, and filter the posts by various keywords to really create a highly focused content stream, for example on optimizing your site for Google.

With the power that Yahoo! Pipes gives you, you could now add your own content, via your own RSS feed, and create an output that mixes all the above feeds on SEM with standalone ads for your SEM services.

Now just promote the RSS feed on your site and start grabbing subscribers. If the RSS feeds you're using as inputs are offering full-text content, your subscribers will be able to read third-party SEM tips from your RSS feed, directly from their RSS Readers, without even taking notice that these articles weren't written by you. But at the same time they would be exposed to your ads, offering your own SEM services.

In essence, using this approach you could leverage the content written by third-party experts, without their permission, to directly build your own brand as an expert and directly generate sales.

The other possibility would be to use the same third-party content, but instead of also publishing ads for your own services, rather publishing paid ads. Again, you would be using third-party content to fuel your own revenues, without the publishers' permissions ... actually directly stealing from them.

2. Adding Ads into Content Items / Removing Native Ads in Content Items

Now, I'm not really 100% certain this is doable (haven't played with the service enough yet), but articles floating around the internet seem to indicate so.

Again, imagine taking the same SEM feeds and creating a new remixed output using them. But this time, you also use Yahoo! Pipes to remove the ads their content items already contained, replacing them with your own.

The result would be a full-text article from an SEM expert, with your SEM services ad directly below the article, taking direct advantage of the article to sell your services ... perhaps even miss-leading the reader that you are the author of the article.

3. Creating Spam Sites

Spam sites are becoming an increasing problem, with unethical webmasters taking advantage of third-party RSS feeds to fully fuel their own sites, in the hopes of targeted content increasing their search engine rankings and serving as a vehicle to drive Google AdSense clicks and revenues.

Yahoo! Pipes now makes this even simpler, actually enabling these webmasters to build full websites of highly relevant and smartly remixed content that will actually provide their visitors with some value and thus even further increase their AdSense revenue potential.

How Can Your Protect Your Content?

Yahoo! Pipes lists 3 ways for publishers to protect their content:

  • Configure your web server to block the user agent "Yahoo Pipes"
  • Add a "noindex" meta to your RSS feed:
  • E-mail pipes-optout@yahoo-inc.com with a list of the feed URLs you want blocked

Of course, the dillema here is that by blocking Yahoo! Pipes in fear of unethical practices you are also blocking acceptable uses of your content by legitimate users and are thus decreasing your content syndication opportunities.

Is It the Tool or the Users?

The four examples are just the tip of the iceberg. With the power of Yahoo! Pipes the "opportunities" for content theft are becoming nearly unlimited.

Of course, this isn't the fault of Yahoo! Pipes. It's just a tool ... and it's in the hands of users what they do with the tool.

Unethical webmasters have actually been doing this for quite some time now even without Yahoo! Pipes. But now they have a stronger tool in their hands, and it's only a question of time when this will hit "the black market mainstream".

What Can Yahoo! Do?

Yahoo! Pipes isn't a problem yet, but when it reaches "the black market mainstream", publishers will start taking notice, and that my create a backslash against Yahoo.

But what can they really do?

  • Somewhat limit the level of manipulation you allow with third-party feeds, at least preventing the removal of inline ads
  • Create a new RSS element that will allow the RSS feed publisher to request an e-mail notification of Yahoo! Pipes use of his feeds, by simply placing that element in the RSS feed
  • Allow the RSS feed publishers to mark their feeds as "Yahoo! Pipes syndication available only on-request", enabling them to authorize the use through the Pipes user interface [this one might be going a little far:)]
  • Implement a stringent "no unfair use" policy, immediately blocking users that exhibit such uses

On the other side, adding all of these administrative hurdles to the pipes creation process for the user would greatly dimish the service's mass appeal.

So what's the right way to do it?

Please comment below ...

[you can now post comments, but you will receive an error message after you submit them ... but they will still be published]

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Where To Find Free Images For Your Web Marketing Campaign
The Web is flooded with million images. Try Google image search or my favorite Picsearch.com and know what I mean. You are tempted to grab the best images and use it for your website. And of course y... [Author: Roz Volv - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

links for 2007-03-27


links for 2007-03-27
AppleTV Hacker: Step By Step How To Rip DVDs for AppleTV with MediaFork (tags: AppleTV TV Video movies) Word Wise: Subject to Change Great advise on writing email subject lines from a fellow Edelman blogger. (tags: Email Writing lifehacks)...

Websites that changed the world
The Guardian Unlimited has celebrated the 15th anniversary of the World Wide Web with an article that also lists 15 Websites that changed the world. You'll probably disagree with many of the sites on the list, but the Web has indeed changed the world....

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS

RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS

How does EzineArticles.com, one of the largest websites to help you syndicate your content, use RSS for their marketing?

To answer this question, we interviewed Christopher Knight for the 2007 edition of the RSS marketing e-book (coming shortly). But if you want to know more, click here to read Christopher's summary.

BTW - did you know that EzineArticles.com publishes more than 40,000 RSS feeds?

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


MarketingStudies.net Back Online and Comments Working Again

After a rather painful week, MarketingStudies.net is back with its full functionality, including comments.

As already noted, we started the move to a new hosting provider about a week ago, when the comments on this blog were again turned off by the old hosting provider without notice.

The move went relatively smoothly, thanks to the great MovableType architecture and excellent cooperation from both the old and the new hosting providers. Plus, we're now running on MovableType 3.3, which really is light years ahead from the old 2.x versions.

The only thing that really went wrong with the move were the sub-domains. Everything else was smooth.

Quick Steps for Changing Your Hosting Provider and Installing a New MovableType Version

If you're thinking of doing the same, here are the quick steps:

a) Sign-up for your new hosting package and contact your new hosting provider. Contact them in person and explain to them what you're doing and that you might need a little more assistance from them to finalize the transfer.

b) Make a replica of all of your files from the old hosting provider and upload the exact folder structure with all the files to the new hosting provider.

c) Export the SQL database with your MovableType data, directly from the SQL interface. You want a full copy of your database with practically everything.

d) Install your current MovableType version on the new server. Do not just copy the files from the old MovableType installation, rather do the installation again on the new server.

e) Import your old SQL database from the old server into the new SQL database on the new server. Make sure you import it into the new database created by MovableType.

You should now have all of the data and settings from MovableType on the old server in MovableType on the new server.

f) Log-in to MovableType on the new server. You will probably need to modify the server paths for storing files, so open the settings for each blog and change the server paths if needed.

g) Rebuild your files on the new server.

h) Install a new MovableType version on top of the current one, of course on the new server.

i) Once everything is working, ask your domain host to point your domains to your new server IPs.

This is it. Good luck!

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Using RSS Radars in B2B CRM

RSS Radars are not just a tool to help you enrich your website content and allow you to easily conduct business intelligence, but can also be used as a B2B Customer Relationship Management tool to help you maintain customer loyalty and provide your customers with some additional added value.

Just recently I received an e-mail from David Koopmans of Mokum Marketing, who gave me the idea for this post.

David's idea is simple:

  • Tag articles of interest to your customers using a service like Diigo or Del.icio.us
  • Provide them with an RSS feed to deliver them the articles as they are updated

This is how David sees the usefulness of such an application:
"The idea is very attractive though; in B2B we often manage a relatively small number of relationships, but they are deep and we want to make them deeper."

But, there are two problems:

  • Tagging the articles using a public service like Diigo or Del.icio.us would make the feeds publicly available, making the service less value due to lack of uniqueness, as also noted by David
  • Tagging relevant articles every day takes time ... time that busy B2B marketers usually don't have, especially if you want to cater a tag-based RSS feed for each of your clients

This is where RSS Radars can come in, enabling you to aggregate dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds, filter them for the relevant keywords to get only the most relevant content for a specific client, and provide that client with his own customized RSS feed, using a service like MySyndicaat.com or pipes.yahoo.com.

Plus, using .htaccess you can easily password protect each feed for each individual client.

More details in the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book:)

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Generating Revenue Through Advertising


F Trains: Another Example of Getting RSS Wrong

RSS Specifications point to the F Train from NYC and their RSS feed, which lets you watch traing schedules and changes.

The essential idea of course is good --> use RSS to get your latest and most important content to your prospects and customers. Train schedules certainly seem relevant enough for someone in NYC to subscribe to them.

But again, someone is missing the point.

If I want to know about traing schedules and changes, I don't care about all schedules and changes. I just care about the routes I take.

If I'm only taking the Queens-bound route, don't talk to me about Manhattan-bound trains.

F Trains, great idea, but now makes this a little more usable and allow people to select which routes they're interested in and then give them an RSS feed just for those.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Comments Off Again

I just love my hosting company.

They again disabled my comments script on the server, of course without giving me any kind of notice.

Usually I'm patient, but what's too much is too much.

So, I apologize for the inconvenience. Comments will be back up as soon as we find a new hosting provider and implement the website there.

In the mean time, please e-mail your comments to info@marketingstudies.net

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


I'm Not Spamming You!

... but someone certainly is, using a non-existant MarketingStudies.net e-mail address.

If you receive an e-mail with the subject "Got It, I Think" from tahaseggdzf@marketingstudies.net, or something simillar, it's spam. Not from us though ...

This is how it works:

(a) The spammer finds a number of open relay e-mail servers, which allow the spammer to send e-mail using an e-mail address that's not "hosted" on the e-mail server and often without even having a user account at the server provider.

(b) He or she then uses your e-mail address as the "Reply To" e-mail address in the spam messages and sends out the spam blast.

(c) Everyone receiving these e-mail messages will now think they are coming from your domain, unless of course they have enough knowledge about the subject to check the headers of the e-mail messages received. Those show that the e-mail is in fact not coming from MarketingStudies.net.

The funny thing about this spam is that the spammer didn't include any links in his spam e-mail.

Looking for ways to stop this, but I'm affraid it might be impossible ...

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Will Yahoo! Pipes Increase Content Theft?

First of all, I was want to emphasize again that I strongly believe that Yahoo! Pipes is a dream come true for marketers, finally offering us a tool to easily conduct business intelligence and create RSS Radars.

However, the more you think of it, the more obvious all the dangers become obvious.

Sure, these were here before, but never before have they been accessible on a mass scale, for free, and with such ease of use.

Just consider it ...

Yahoo! Pipes gives anyone, with some time on their hands to learn how it works, the power to remix, filter and manipulate third-party content. In essence this means that you can easily take someone elses RSS feed and repurpose their content to best suit your needs and at the same time ignoring the needs of the publisher who is investing time, money and other resources into his content creation.

1. Creating Third-Party RSS Feeds with Your Standalone RSS Ads

Let's get started with something easy. Yahoo! Pipes allows you to combine any amount of XML data sources and filter them to create an output that best matches your needs.

For example, you could take 100 RSS feeds that talk about search engine marketing, combine them, deduplicate the posts, and filter the posts by various keywords to really create a highly focused content stream, for example on optimizing your site for Google.

With the power that Yahoo! Pipes gives you, you could now add your own content, via your own RSS feed, and create an output that mixes all the above feeds on SEM with standalone ads for your SEM services.

Now just promote the RSS feed on your site and start grabbing subscribers. If the RSS feeds you're using as inputs are offering full-text content, your subscribers will be able to read third-party SEM tips from your RSS feed, directly from their RSS Readers, without even taking notice that these articles weren't written by you. But at the same time they would be exposed to your ads, offering your own SEM services.

In essence, using this approach you could leverage the content written by third-party experts, without their permission, to directly build your own brand as an expert and directly generate sales.

The other possibility would be to use the same third-party content, but instead of also publishing ads for your own services, rather publishing paid ads. Again, you would be using third-party content to fuel your own revenues, without the publishers' permissions ... actually directly stealing from them.

2. Adding Ads into Content Items / Removing Native Ads in Content Items

Now, I'm not really 100% certain this is doable (haven't played with the service enough yet), but articles floating around the internet seem to indicate so.

Again, imagine taking the same SEM feeds and creating a new remixed output using them. But this time, you also use Yahoo! Pipes to remove the ads their content items already contained, replacing them with your own.

The result would be a full-text article from an SEM expert, with your SEM services ad directly below the article, taking direct advantage of the article to sell your services ... perhaps even miss-leading the reader that you are the author of the article.

3. Creating Spam Sites

Spam sites are becoming an increasing problem, with unethical webmasters taking advantage of third-party RSS feeds to fully fuel their own sites, in the hopes of targeted content increasing their search engine rankings and serving as a vehicle to drive Google AdSense clicks and revenues.

Yahoo! Pipes now makes this even simpler, actually enabling these webmasters to build full websites of highly relevant and smartly remixed content that will actually provide their visitors with some value and thus even further increase their AdSense revenue potential.

How Can Your Protect Your Content?

Yahoo! Pipes lists 3 ways for publishers to protect their content:

  • Configure your web server to block the user agent "Yahoo Pipes"
  • Add a "noindex" meta to your RSS feed:
  • E-mail pipes-optout@yahoo-inc.com with a list of the feed URLs you want blocked

Of course, the dillema here is that by blocking Yahoo! Pipes in fear of unethical practices you are also blocking acceptable uses of your content by legitimate users and are thus decreasing your content syndication opportunities.

Is It the Tool or the Users?

The four examples are just the tip of the iceberg. With the power of Yahoo! Pipes the "opportunities" for content theft are becoming nearly unlimited.

Of course, this isn't the fault of Yahoo! Pipes. It's just a tool ... and it's in the hands of users what they do with the tool.

Unethical webmasters have actually been doing this for quite some time now even without Yahoo! Pipes. But now they have a stronger tool in their hands, and it's only a question of time when this will hit "the black market mainstream".

What Can Yahoo! Do?

Yahoo! Pipes isn't a problem yet, but when it reaches "the black market mainstream", publishers will start taking notice, and that my create a backslash against Yahoo.

But what can they really do?

  • Somewhat limit the level of manipulation you allow with third-party feeds, at least preventing the removal of inline ads
  • Create a new RSS element that will allow the RSS feed publisher to request an e-mail notification of Yahoo! Pipes use of his feeds, by simply placing that element in the RSS feed
  • Allow the RSS feed publishers to mark their feeds as "Yahoo! Pipes syndication available only on-request", enabling them to authorize the use through the Pipes user interface [this one might be going a little far:)]
  • Implement a stringent "no unfair use" policy, immediately blocking users that exhibit such uses

On the other side, adding all of these administrative hurdles to the pipes creation process for the user would greatly dimish the service's mass appeal.

So what's the right way to do it?

Please comment below ...

[you can now post comments, but you will receive an error message after you submit them ... but they will still be published]

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


How to write an effective copy
Finding just the right words to describe your product or service isn\'t as easy as it looks, says Puneet Mehrotra. Published on 12th October ..

Everything you wanted to know about Copyrights


Content is King on a Website
Content can make or break a website. The power of the written word has been witnessed many a time. Products have become success stories, resumes trans ..

The Next Big Thing
Embedded software, Wireless Net, P2P, Real time movies, and Medicare are some of the often heard phrases used to describe the next big thing on the ..

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Split Run Testing


Split Run Testing
If you are a webpreneur, split testing is a definite recommendation. Not only it increases sales but also lets go of unnecessary graphics and copy. A ..

Readers Weigh In...
Last week, I ran the following in WritersWeekly Whispers and Warnings: Creative TECHniques / creativetechniquesmag.com / All American Crafts Inc. / allamericancrafts.com - Writer alleges she's owed $350; publisher got upset with writer and terminated the contract...after the articles were finished and submitted. What do you think? Does the publisher owe the writer the money? WritersWeekly would love your opinion on this one! Quite a few of you wrote in with your opinions! Some of you agreed with my opinion while many of you didn't. The responses are great! Please read them here: http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?t=7250

Link popularity and tools for link building
Link popularity and link quality are important because all search engines consider them as a part of their ranking algorithms, says Puneet Mehrotra ..

How to write an effective copy
Finding just the right words to describe your product or service isn\'t as easy as it looks, says Puneet Mehrotra. Published on 12th October ..

New Blog Coming
I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can [...]

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Skimmers Need Subheadings and Lists

Skimmers Need Subheadings and Lists
Michael Stelzner asks How Do You Capture Skimmers over on his Writing White Papers blog today, and it got me thinking. It's true, everyone's busy, and admit it, we don't read things carefully, we skim. So what's a writer to...

Beyond Writing: Use Your Voice with Podcasts
Sometimes writing isn't enough. As a writer, you probably like to read information. But here's a clue: not everyone's a reader. There is a huge audience of people out there who like listening to podcasts. In fact, there's 65 million...

Expression Web Designer Beta
I had been anxious to check out Microsoft’s new Expression Web Designer, not because I had any issues with FrontPage 2003, but because I like playing with new programs. I was thrilled when I received the download notice for the initial private beta, which they have since offered to the general public. I am probably not [...]

Publicity for Books


BEA Book Expo America: Good for Independent Publishers?


Writers and Bloggers for Hire
I've been researching ways to monetize your blog, in preparation for an Ask the Experts panel at Business BlogHer this week in NYC. And I'm discovering all these websites and lists where writers can find additional freelance work. Check out...

BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers


Throwing In The Towel
I believe that the number one way to find financial success is to first find what you love doing, and then find a way to get paid for doing it. I see people that spend weeks asking everyone they talk to for online business opportunities that they can make money at. It never crosses their [...]

BlogHer Business Conference: Things to Do in NYC
Denise and I decided to spend the weekend just for fun in Manhattan. I haven't researched yet, but on my list of things to do would be shopping, museums and a good play. I'm wondering what good plays there are...

Are You the Biggest Difference?
Are you the biggest difference for your business? Many years ago, a motivational speaker told me that the surest way to financial success was to find something that I absolutely love doing and then find a way to get paid for doing it. This is probably the best advice that I have ever received, and advice [...]

Getting in Newspapers . . . Easy for our clients


Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips


Customized Newsletter Articles You Can Use
Attention executive coaches, management consultants, OD specialists: If you want help finding good material for your newsletters, Customized Newsletter Services has a catalog of articles you can buy and rewrite for your purposes. The research is already done for you,...

Teleseminars with Ellen Britt: Audio File Posted
If you missed the Blogging and Beyond show last Thursday, Denise has just posted it on the site. We interviewed Ellen Britt of Marketing Qi about her tremendous success with teleseminars and how you can use this low cost tool...

1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign


1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

The Corporate Blogging Book
Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

What I ve Learned about Blogging From Robert Scoble
Today’s guest post is from Chris Garrett from chrisg.com. In my last guest post here I listed some things we can learn from Darren’s blog. This time I am going to look at a blogger who many would like to emulate, if only for the fame, blog celebrity lifestyle and cool geek toys he gets access [...]

TeleSeminars: Building Business the Low-Tech Way
Blogging and BeyondMarch 22, 20078:00 a.m. PT (11 a.m. ET)Blogging and Beyond with The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., and Denise WakemanWith Guest Expert: Ellen Britt of Marketing Qi Intensive and author of Teleseminar Jumpstart Low-Tech Promotion: Using TeleSeminars...

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Sneak peak of my new blog

Sneak peak of my new blog
It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you. The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a [...]

It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you.

The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a money making site. You will be given the exact steps which I follow to make a profitable website, plus website templates that I use. You will find them under tutorial series. I’m sharing the stuff that you don’t find in paid stuff.

I know the screenshot is blur and too small, but I can’t disclose it yet :) Talk to you soon.



The 10-Step RSS Marketing Plan

While RSS has certainly become well-established with most marketers, few are using it to its full advantage.

Now, while the original Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS e-book focused on explaining RSS marketing in a world where RSS was just starting out, the 2007 edition will focus on optimizing your RSS marketing and getting as much as possible from it.

The 10-step plan is one of the tools we will be introducing in the 2007 edition, once it's launched (getting there:).

Going through this plan will help you get as much as possible from RSS, on all levels. It will help you bring your RSS marketing to the same level as your e-mail marketing, and more.

But for now, here's a very quick summary of the steps from the process view point.

1. Develop your RSS marketing strategy
It all starts with a strategy that defines all the other elements of your RSS marketing plan. Developing your RSS marketing strategy consists of planning your RSS usage for each marketing function and integrating it with the rest of your marketing mix, and setting the goals for each of the marketing functions.

2. Start using RSS for business intelligence
Conducting business intelligence using RSS is the first step to improving your marketing overall. You will start by finding the right RSS Reader for you, define your business intelligence needs, find the relevant information sources, and implementing the right RSS business intelligence tools.

3. Plan your overall outbound RSS content strategy
Outbound communications using RSS are the most complex part of RSS marketing, with numerous choices available to you. During this step you will define your outbound communications target audiences, define your goals for each of them, decide on your RSS feed publishing model, define your RSS feed content and define your RSS feed content sources.

4. Define your RSS marketing requirements & select your RSS marketing vendor
Defining your RSS marketing technology requirements and selecting the appropriate vendor to supply you with all the features you need to support your strategy.

5. Plan your RSS content strategy on the content-item level
Once you have prepared your overall RSS content strategy you need to plan your RSS content-item level strategy, which essentially means getting the right content in place within the feed to meet your objectives. This consists of defining your writing style, defining the content item structure and defining your calls-to-action.

6. Promote your RSS feeds internally
Simply publishing RSS feeds on your website is not enough to generate subscribers. In this section you will define your RSS feed subscription process, define the RSS feed promotion locations for your feeds, develop the subscription offer and implement the other neccessary technical items to increase your subscription growth.

7. Promote your RSS feeds externally
After setting everything correctly through your own channels, it is neccesary to promote the RSS feeds using external websites as well. This process includes optimizing your RSS feed for the search engines, submitting the feed to the search engines and performing periodic pinging.

8. Measure and optimize your RSS feeds
Measurement and optimization are the two areas that can have the most profound impact on your RSS success. This consists of defining the required metrics, establishing the technical capacities for measurement, measuring and optimizing your content strategy and measuring and optimizing your subscription generation tactics.

9. Use RSS to syndicate your content to other online media
Use RSS to get your content published on other relevant media. The neccessary steps for syndication are defining your target media, defining your RSS feed content, preparing the right syndication tools and promoting your syndication offerings.

10. Use RSS to enhance your website and brand
Enhancing your website is about adding third-party content to enrich the user experience, while enhancing your brand is about providing your own branded RSS Reader.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?

Is Amazon missing the RSS opportunity?

Yes, in almost all regards. A company of their size, financing and almost unlimited content could be the poster child for smart RSS marketing uses, but insteady they choose to almost ignore the channel.

But today I would like to touch-up especially on the RSS advertising segment, where many marketers still seem to ignore the various opportunities offered by the channel.

Even more specifically, this is about RSS advertising in RSS feeds for blogs.

What Are the Key Advertising Issues Faced by Bloggers?

  • Bloggers like to keep their act clean, and in many cases that means either completely evading paid advertising or at least completely evading non-contextual paid advertising.
  • Even when bloggers do decide to offer advertising, they are hard-pressed to find advertisers offering high-context advertising that would closely relate to the bloggers' content, especially their individual blog posts.
  • There are still few RSS advertisers, making it difficult for many bloggers to monetize on their every post.
  • However, if bloggers were to monetize their every post, the ads would need to be so highly contextual that they would not feel that they are betrying their readers.
  • In essence, the ads would need to be an extension of their content, but at the same time clearly marked as third-party content.
  • Following this line of though further, bloggers would prefer ads that provide real contextual value to their readers, instead of simply pushing blatant advertising messages.

Where's the Opportunity for Amazon?

Before I explore this further, please take a look at any post at MasterNewMedia. Or just click here and take a look at this one.

Robin Good is a master at taking advantage of the functionality offered by the Amazon affiliate program. Each of his posts concludes with recommended books, related to the overall topic of his in-depth articles.

For Robin's readers, these book ads are not just ads, but rather extensions of Robin's own content, giving them the opportunity to further explore the topic.

What's the opportunity for Amazon?

Create and promote a program that would make it easy for bloggers to publish contextually related book ads directly in their RSS feeds, enabling them to at least somewhat monetize each of their content items with relevant book ads.

Providing Valuable Context Advertising

But, to some bloggers providing book ads just as ads might not be contextual enough.

Now go to A9.com and do a search for "RSS marketing". In addition to displaying relevant books, the A9 search engine also displays quotes from these books.

How about if Amazon enabled bloggers to post RSS ads in their feeds, displaying a paragraph from each book that most closely matches the topic of the article, with a direct link to the page for that book on Amazon?

Or in the case of blogs about music, why not provide an automatic direct link in the ad to a 1 minute or 30 second demo of the song or group, mentioned in the blog post, which Amazon already has on their website?

Picking on Wikipedia

We all love Wikipedia, right?

Many of Wikipedia users love them so much that they constantly promote the website. So why can't the people at Wikipedia make this easier for bloggers?

For example by allowing them to automatically insert references to Wikipedia in the form of inline RSS ads, providing additional contextual content, related with the topic of the blog post?

No revenues for the blogger, but at least a good way for them to extent their content and provide more value to their readers.

Perhaps not a good RSS advertising example, but certainly one that can get you thinking about the various opportunities provided by this channel.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Quick RSS SEO Tips

WebProNews has a short summary from Amanda Watlington's tips for SEO optimization of your RSS feeds:

1. Subscribe to your own feed and claim it on blog engine Technorati

2. Focus your feed with a keyword theme

3. Use keywords in the title tag; keep it under 100 characters

4. Most feed readers display feeds alphabetically, title accordingly

5. Write description tags as if for a directory; keep them under 500 characters

6. Use full paths on links and unique URLs for each item

7. Provide email updates for the non-techies

8. Offer an HTML version of your feed

9. For branding, add logo and images to your feed

Now, let's add some tips from Stephan Spencer and continue with the numbering:

10. Full text, not summaries

11. 20 or MORE items (not just 10)

12. Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post)

13. Keyword-rich item [title]

14. Your brand name in the item [title]

15. Your most important keyword in the site [title] container

16. Compelling site [description]

17. Don't put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss)

18. An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines

And to round this off, a summary of my own tips [part 2 here] for using RSS to drive traffic to your site:

19. Get your RSS content (proactively) syndicated on other relevant websites [just the headlines and summaries of course]

20. Submit your RSS feeds to all the RSS search engines and directories

21. Use RSS to add relevant third-party content [again, just headlines and summaries] to your website to gain additional SE weight for your keywords

22. Use RSS to deliver all of your frequently updated content, not just for your latest blog posts

23. Whenever the content in your feed changes, ping the most important search engines and directories [yes, you don't need a blog for this]

Do you have more tips?

(a) Post them in the comments form below.

(b) E-mail me at info@marketingstudies.net and let's set-up an interview

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Frank Kern Audio and PDF Leaked to Public

When Works Pass Into The Public Domain

$10,652.00 in Bonuses for Shawn Casey's "How To Make An Absolute Fortune..."

Will Yahoo! Pipes Increase Content Theft?

First of all, I was want to emphasize again that I strongly believe that Yahoo! Pipes is a dream come true for marketers, finally offering us a tool to easily conduct business intelligence and create RSS Radars.

However, the more you think of it, the more obvious all the dangers become obvious.

Sure, these were here before, but never before have they been accessible on a mass scale, for free, and with such ease of use.

Just consider it ...

Yahoo! Pipes gives anyone, with some time on their hands to learn how it works, the power to remix, filter and manipulate third-party content. In essence this means that you can easily take someone elses RSS feed and repurpose their content to best suit your needs and at the same time ignoring the needs of the publisher who is investing time, money and other resources into his content creation.

1. Creating Third-Party RSS Feeds with Your Standalone RSS Ads

Let's get started with something easy. Yahoo! Pipes allows you to combine any amount of XML data sources and filter them to create an output that best matches your needs.

For example, you could take 100 RSS feeds that talk about search engine marketing, combine them, deduplicate the posts, and filter the posts by various keywords to really create a highly focused content stream, for example on optimizing your site for Google.

With the power that Yahoo! Pipes gives you, you could now add your own content, via your own RSS feed, and create an output that mixes all the above feeds on SEM with standalone ads for your SEM services.

Now just promote the RSS feed on your site and start grabbing subscribers. If the RSS feeds you're using as inputs are offering full-text content, your subscribers will be able to read third-party SEM tips from your RSS feed, directly from their RSS Readers, without even taking notice that these articles weren't written by you. But at the same time they would be exposed to your ads, offering your own SEM services.

In essence, using this approach you could leverage the content written by third-party experts, without their permission, to directly build your own brand as an expert and directly generate sales.

The other possibility would be to use the same third-party content, but instead of also publishing ads for your own services, rather publishing paid ads. Again, you would be using third-party content to fuel your own revenues, without the publishers' permissions ... actually directly stealing from them.

2. Adding Ads into Content Items / Removing Native Ads in Content Items

Now, I'm not really 100% certain this is doable (haven't played with the service enough yet), but articles floating around the internet seem to indicate so.

Again, imagine taking the same SEM feeds and creating a new remixed output using them. But this time, you also use Yahoo! Pipes to remove the ads their content items already contained, replacing them with your own.

The result would be a full-text article from an SEM expert, with your SEM services ad directly below the article, taking direct advantage of the article to sell your services ... perhaps even miss-leading the reader that you are the author of the article.

3. Creating Spam Sites

Spam sites are becoming an increasing problem, with unethical webmasters taking advantage of third-party RSS feeds to fully fuel their own sites, in the hopes of targeted content increasing their search engine rankings and serving as a vehicle to drive Google AdSense clicks and revenues.

Yahoo! Pipes now makes this even simpler, actually enabling these webmasters to build full websites of highly relevant and smartly remixed content that will actually provide their visitors with some value and thus even further increase their AdSense revenue potential.

How Can Your Protect Your Content?

Yahoo! Pipes lists 3 ways for publishers to protect their content:

  • Configure your web server to block the user agent "Yahoo Pipes"
  • Add a "noindex" meta to your RSS feed:
  • E-mail pipes-optout@yahoo-inc.com with a list of the feed URLs you want blocked

Of course, the dillema here is that by blocking Yahoo! Pipes in fear of unethical practices you are also blocking acceptable uses of your content by legitimate users and are thus decreasing your content syndication opportunities.

Is It the Tool or the Users?

The four examples are just the tip of the iceberg. With the power of Yahoo! Pipes the "opportunities" for content theft are becoming nearly unlimited.

Of course, this isn't the fault of Yahoo! Pipes. It's just a tool ... and it's in the hands of users what they do with the tool.

Unethical webmasters have actually been doing this for quite some time now even without Yahoo! Pipes. But now they have a stronger tool in their hands, and it's only a question of time when this will hit "the black market mainstream".

What Can Yahoo! Do?

Yahoo! Pipes isn't a problem yet, but when it reaches "the black market mainstream", publishers will start taking notice, and that my create a backslash against Yahoo.

But what can they really do?

  • Somewhat limit the level of manipulation you allow with third-party feeds, at least preventing the removal of inline ads
  • Create a new RSS element that will allow the RSS feed publisher to request an e-mail notification of Yahoo! Pipes use of his feeds, by simply placing that element in the RSS feed
  • Allow the RSS feed publishers to mark their feeds as "Yahoo! Pipes syndication available only on-request", enabling them to authorize the use through the Pipes user interface [this one might be going a little far:)]
  • Implement a stringent "no unfair use" policy, immediately blocking users that exhibit such uses

On the other side, adding all of these administrative hurdles to the pipes creation process for the user would greatly dimish the service's mass appeal.

So what's the right way to do it?

Please comment below ...

[you can now post comments, but you will receive an error message after you submit them ... but they will still be published]

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Comments Off Again

I just love my hosting company.

They again disabled my comments script on the server, of course without giving me any kind of notice.

Usually I'm patient, but what's too much is too much.

So, I apologize for the inconvenience. Comments will be back up as soon as we find a new hosting provider and implement the website there.

In the mean time, please e-mail your comments to info@marketingstudies.net

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Please Update RSS FEED!
It’s here now, my new blog is ready. Please update your RSS feed to… http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome New blog is located at: http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/ See you there!

It’s here now, my new blog is ready.

Please update your RSS feed to…


http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome

New blog is located at:

http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/

See you there!



MarketingStudies.net Back Online and Comments Working Again

After a rather painful week, MarketingStudies.net is back with its full functionality, including comments.

As already noted, we started the move to a new hosting provider about a week ago, when the comments on this blog were again turned off by the old hosting provider without notice.

The move went relatively smoothly, thanks to the great MovableType architecture and excellent cooperation from both the old and the new hosting providers. Plus, we're now running on MovableType 3.3, which really is light years ahead from the old 2.x versions.

The only thing that really went wrong with the move were the sub-domains. Everything else was smooth.

Quick Steps for Changing Your Hosting Provider and Installing a New MovableType Version

If you're thinking of doing the same, here are the quick steps:

a) Sign-up for your new hosting package and contact your new hosting provider. Contact them in person and explain to them what you're doing and that you might need a little more assistance from them to finalize the transfer.

b) Make a replica of all of your files from the old hosting provider and upload the exact folder structure with all the files to the new hosting provider.

c) Export the SQL database with your MovableType data, directly from the SQL interface. You want a full copy of your database with practically everything.

d) Install your current MovableType version on the new server. Do not just copy the files from the old MovableType installation, rather do the installation again on the new server.

e) Import your old SQL database from the old server into the new SQL database on the new server. Make sure you import it into the new database created by MovableType.

You should now have all of the data and settings from MovableType on the old server in MovableType on the new server.

f) Log-in to MovableType on the new server. You will probably need to modify the server paths for storing files, so open the settings for each blog and change the server paths if needed.

g) Rebuild your files on the new server.

h) Install a new MovableType version on top of the current one, of course on the new server.

i) Once everything is working, ask your domain host to point your domains to your new server IPs.

This is it. Good luck!

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


F Trains: Another Example of Getting RSS Wrong

RSS Specifications point to the F Train from NYC and their RSS feed, which lets you watch traing schedules and changes.

The essential idea of course is good --> use RSS to get your latest and most important content to your prospects and customers. Train schedules certainly seem relevant enough for someone in NYC to subscribe to them.

But again, someone is missing the point.

If I want to know about traing schedules and changes, I don't care about all schedules and changes. I just care about the routes I take.

If I'm only taking the Queens-bound route, don't talk to me about Manhattan-bound trains.

F Trains, great idea, but now makes this a little more usable and allow people to select which routes they're interested in and then give them an RSS feed just for those.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Directly Grabbing RSS Subscribers and Getting Syndicated Through Pheedo RSS Advertising

Pheedo just released a new RSS advertising concept, called FeedPowered Advertising, that helps you generate new subscribers to your RSS feeds using RSS advertising, through Pheedo's RSS advertising network or through other ad networks.

The Key Facts

Their new RSS ad format ...

[a] Displays the latest content items from your RSS feed, including video content with direct "watch" links

[b] Allows the user to also add your content (directly from the ad) to del.icio.us, digg, Reddit, Furl or e-mai it to a friend

How the New Format Integrates DM, PR and Brand

The implications of this are quite strong.

[a] The ad format allows you to syndicate your RSS content to targeted online media, displaying your content there directly to generate more brand awareness, build your credibility and get new readers by actually demonstrating your value

[b] Furthemore, the ad itself contains further syndication options that will virally spread your content through the key social networking sites

[c] The ad functions as a direct subscription generation tool, enabling you to quickly capture new subscribers through other sites ... and actually works towards increasing your conversion rate by first demonstrating the content and so making the subscription decision easier and more educated, thus generating better qualified subscribers/prospects

In essence, the ad format integrates PR, direct marketing and brand advertising.

Is it perfect? While it is an amazing idea, it does need some further refinement.

Further Improvements Needed

[a] Looking at their example on their site using Internet Explorer 7 shows that the feed subscription option in the ad is not highlighted through the IE7 native RSS Reader, making it less intuitive to subscribe

[b] The existing example is clearly targeted to RSS Aware users. But data shows that more than 80% of RSS users are not actually aware of using RSS. The ad format also need to include other subscription options, in addition to the RSS button, such as Add to MyYahoo!

[c] The ad also needs some space at the bottom to better entice viewers to subscribe, using enticing copy and perhaps bribing the viewers to subscribe by offering them a free whitepaper

[d] For direct marketers, the ad format should also allow an in-between data capture window, allowing the direct marketer to capture prospect information prior to being given access to the feed

[e] The next step would be for Pheedo to add additional metrics for advertisers, such as new subscriber retention and long-term customer conversion, and perhaps even the CPO.

If you want to check it out yourself, here's the screenshot (working version available here):

I'm a little biased here, because I've always dug Pheedo work, but in my opinion this is the best RSS advertising development yet ... and finally an RSS advertising tool to generate real results by taking advantage of the power of RSS.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Using RSS Radars in B2B CRM

RSS Radars are not just a tool to help you enrich your website content and allow you to easily conduct business intelligence, but can also be used as a B2B Customer Relationship Management tool to help you maintain customer loyalty and provide your customers with some additional added value.

Just recently I received an e-mail from David Koopmans of Mokum Marketing, who gave me the idea for this post.

David's idea is simple:

  • Tag articles of interest to your customers using a service like Diigo or Del.icio.us
  • Provide them with an RSS feed to deliver them the articles as they are updated

This is how David sees the usefulness of such an application:
"The idea is very attractive though; in B2B we often manage a relatively small number of relationships, but they are deep and we want to make them deeper."

But, there are two problems:

  • Tagging the articles using a public service like Diigo or Del.icio.us would make the feeds publicly available, making the service less value due to lack of uniqueness, as also noted by David
  • Tagging relevant articles every day takes time ... time that busy B2B marketers usually don't have, especially if you want to cater a tag-based RSS feed for each of your clients

This is where RSS Radars can come in, enabling you to aggregate dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds, filter them for the relevant keywords to get only the most relevant content for a specific client, and provide that client with his own customized RSS feed, using a service like MySyndicaat.com or pipes.yahoo.com.

Plus, using .htaccess you can easily password protect each feed for each individual client.

More details in the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book:)

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


I'm Not Spamming You!

... but someone certainly is, using a non-existant MarketingStudies.net e-mail address.

If you receive an e-mail with the subject "Got It, I Think" from tahaseggdzf@marketingstudies.net, or something simillar, it's spam. Not from us though ...

This is how it works:

(a) The spammer finds a number of open relay e-mail servers, which allow the spammer to send e-mail using an e-mail address that's not "hosted" on the e-mail server and often without even having a user account at the server provider.

(b) He or she then uses your e-mail address as the "Reply To" e-mail address in the spam messages and sends out the spam blast.

(c) Everyone receiving these e-mail messages will now think they are coming from your domain, unless of course they have enough knowledge about the subject to check the headers of the e-mail messages received. Those show that the e-mail is in fact not coming from MarketingStudies.net.

The funny thing about this spam is that the spammer didn't include any links in his spam e-mail.

Looking for ways to stop this, but I'm affraid it might be impossible ...

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


What You Can Do With Amazon RSS Now?

If I keep this up, I might actually get the reputation of picking on Amazon.com as a hobby [just take a look at Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?, Why is Everyone Missing the RSS Transactional Messaging Opportunity? and Get the Most from RSS Marketing ... Take Your DM Hat Off!].

It's just one of those things. You see a company that could really go above and beyond with RSS and really use it to drive revenues, but they just don't do it.

But at least they're showing some activitiy lately ...
[in addition to removing their list of relatively useless category feeds, which used to be available here]

a) Gold Box
Gold Box is a service that provides you with personalized deals every day. It finally has an RSS feed with your daily deals.

But, unfortunatelly, the RSS feed only provides brief information about the product, instead of also giving you a direct purchase link, some of the latest product reviews and other information that could facilitate the sale. Also, there's no personalization, or so it seems. Why not give me an RSS feed with just the special deals for me, based on my previous purchases?

b) Plog
This is one of the genius Amazon ideas. Each Plog is personalized to the individual user, giving him the latest blog posts from Amazon's authors (just from the authors' whos books you've purchased), and it also comes with a targeted RSS feed, matching the Plog content you see when you're logged-in. You can also subscribe to additional blog content manually.

Also, Amazon is promising that we'll be soon able to track latest releases, changes to our orders and "much more" through our plogs, which will presumably also come be published in our targeted RSS feeds.

Amazon, please keep this up. Make us happy:)

c) The Amazon API
But let's be fair to Amazon. Even though their end-user RSS feed offering is poor, they do provide developers with the ability to create their own RSS feeds from Amazon, by integrating with their API.

Here are some examples:

RSStalker.com - provides a variety of Amazon product tracking options via RSS, such as a 10% price drop feed that lets you know when a product that RSStalker is tracking via Amazon drops 10% in price; RSS feeds from your wishlists; last 25 price changes in a selected Amazon category, and more.

Baebo - provides a persistant search RSS feed for Amazon products, based on your keywords.

More great examples floating around ...

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


New Marketing Thinking Required for Second Life?

Mobil Avenue accuses me of 20th century marketing thinking. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but it seems that my Second Life posts ticked off some people.

Now, don't get me wrong, I see alot of development potential in virtual worlds, but Second Life as it is simply does not cut it.

I won't go into the details again, but the sheer lack of economy of scales shows that something is wrong when you compare the investments in Second Life and the actual virtual world penetration. Not to mention the difficult user interface.

Second Life is a good beginning, but virtual worlds have a far way to go before they deserve to be treated as seriously as some are treating them today. Yes, Second Life should certainly be treated as a marketing/communications playground, but not as a high importance marketing channel.

If you want to call this 20th century thinking, go ahead. It is. As are economies of scale, profitability, sales conversion, cost per order and other business "relics".

And as you'll notice, 20th century thinking still works, even in 2007. We've all heard stories of the demise of advertising, the death of PR, the death of e-mail, the death of postal direct mail and so on ... but they're all alive, well and kicking still today, and will remain so.

Actually, intrusive direct response TV advertising is still one of the most effective tools to generate sales. And it gives you more bang for the buck than almost any other marketing channel, including online.

Do I like this? No. I'd love to believe that the internet is the alpha and omega of marketing. But it's not. It's the key connector, but not the key driver. That's the way things are, and as markters we need to employ 20th century thinking and use what works best ... and the numbers tell us that.

But this doesn't mean we shouldn't play and test. Quite on the contrary.

OK, this conversation is getting somewhat beyond the original topic, and it's quite possible I'm not even getting what Mobil Avenue is trying to say:)

And please don't get me started on 3D virtual webstores ...

Of course, I might be wrong. And if I am, I'll be the first to change my stripes the next day. It's what marketers do. If a new thing comes up and works better than what you're doing, change. But every change first demand proof. Unless you're just testing ... because when you're testing, the rules of the game change.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


YPN vs Adsense
David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot. Very interesting read, please check it out. Making Money with YPN

David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.

Very interesting read, please check it out.

Making Money with YPN



WordPress 2.1 is Ready
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it. Download WordPress 2.1.

Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.

Download WordPress 2.1.



How To Make An Absolute Fortune in the Information Products Business by Shawn Casey

A Few Positions Have Opened up at Content Site Builder

RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS

How does EzineArticles.com, one of the largest websites to help you syndicate your content, use RSS for their marketing?

To answer this question, we interviewed Christopher Knight for the 2007 edition of the RSS marketing e-book (coming shortly). But if you want to know more, click here to read Christopher's summary.

BTW - did you know that EzineArticles.com publishes more than 40,000 RSS feeds?

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Generating Revenue Through Advertising


Generating Revenue Through Advertising


I Knew I Couldn't Write a Whole Book...But I Did! By Kristen J. Tsetsi
A few years ago, I knew I would never, ever write a book. I'd written short stories, a few plays, even a screenplay or two, but a book? A book was two-hundred (plus!) pages. A book had characters doing God-knows-what, chapter after chapter, and staying interesting at the same time. A book had the interweaving of types and archetypes with subplots and symbols and... Preposterous.

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book

The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

F Trains: Another Example of Getting RSS Wrong

RSS Specifications point to the F Train from NYC and their RSS feed, which lets you watch traing schedules and changes.

The essential idea of course is good --> use RSS to get your latest and most important content to your prospects and customers. Train schedules certainly seem relevant enough for someone in NYC to subscribe to them.

But again, someone is missing the point.

If I want to know about traing schedules and changes, I don't care about all schedules and changes. I just care about the routes I take.

If I'm only taking the Queens-bound route, don't talk to me about Manhattan-bound trains.

F Trains, great idea, but now makes this a little more usable and allow people to select which routes they're interested in and then give them an RSS feed just for those.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


Blogging is Publishing
I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

links for 2007-03-24
TwitterBuzz - The most popular links on Twitter - URL Popularity "TwitterBuzz shows you what people using Twitter, a microblogging service, are linking to. It's updated constantly" (tags: twitter zeitgeist) Revso Cool new web 2.0 blog. (tags: Blogs newvoices Web2.0)...

AttentionMeter Compares Alexa, Quantcast, Compete
Here's a neat web application that triangulates traffic graphs from Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast. It's called the Attentionmeter. I am not sure about the name but I can live with it. Even better, there's a handy dandy bookmarklet (yum, I...

Twitter May Face Huge SMS Bills
In the good ol' United States of America, the receiver pays the SMS bill. In Canada, Australia, Europe and I believe much of Asia, the sender pays. For Twitter, this may add up fast. If you spend some time on...

Its Name is Zookoda
Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

Directly Grabbing RSS Subscribers and Getting Syndicated Through Pheedo RSS Advertising

Pheedo just released a new RSS advertising concept, called FeedPowered Advertising, that helps you generate new subscribers to your RSS feeds using RSS advertising, through Pheedo's RSS advertising network or through other ad networks.

The Key Facts

Their new RSS ad format ...

[a] Displays the latest content items from your RSS feed, including video content with direct "watch" links

[b] Allows the user to also add your content (directly from the ad) to del.icio.us, digg, Reddit, Furl or e-mai it to a friend

How the New Format Integrates DM, PR and Brand

The implications of this are quite strong.

[a] The ad format allows you to syndicate your RSS content to targeted online media, displaying your content there directly to generate more brand awareness, build your credibility and get new readers by actually demonstrating your value

[b] Furthemore, the ad itself contains further syndication options that will virally spread your content through the key social networking sites

[c] The ad functions as a direct subscription generation tool, enabling you to quickly capture new subscribers through other sites ... and actually works towards increasing your conversion rate by first demonstrating the content and so making the subscription decision easier and more educated, thus generating better qualified subscribers/prospects

In essence, the ad format integrates PR, direct marketing and brand advertising.

Is it perfect? While it is an amazing idea, it does need some further refinement.

Further Improvements Needed

[a] Looking at their example on their site using Internet Explorer 7 shows that the feed subscription option in the ad is not highlighted through the IE7 native RSS Reader, making it less intuitive to subscribe

[b] The existing example is clearly targeted to RSS Aware users. But data shows that more than 80% of RSS users are not actually aware of using RSS. The ad format also need to include other subscription options, in addition to the RSS button, such as Add to MyYahoo!

[c] The ad also needs some space at the bottom to better entice viewers to subscribe, using enticing copy and perhaps bribing the viewers to subscribe by offering them a free whitepaper

[d] For direct marketers, the ad format should also allow an in-between data capture window, allowing the direct marketer to capture prospect information prior to being given access to the feed

[e] The next step would be for Pheedo to add additional metrics for advertisers, such as new subscriber retention and long-term customer conversion, and perhaps even the CPO.

If you want to check it out yourself, here's the screenshot (working version available here):

I'm a little biased here, because I've always dug Pheedo work, but in my opinion this is the best RSS advertising development yet ... and finally an RSS advertising tool to generate real results by taking advantage of the power of RSS.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


The 10-Step RSS Marketing Plan

While RSS has certainly become well-established with most marketers, few are using it to its full advantage.

Now, while the original Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS e-book focused on explaining RSS marketing in a world where RSS was just starting out, the 2007 edition will focus on optimizing your RSS marketing and getting as much as possible from it.

The 10-step plan is one of the tools we will be introducing in the 2007 edition, once it's launched (getting there:).

Going through this plan will help you get as much as possible from RSS, on all levels. It will help you bring your RSS marketing to the same level as your e-mail marketing, and more.

But for now, here's a very quick summary of the steps from the process view point.

1. Develop your RSS marketing strategy
It all starts with a strategy that defines all the other elements of your RSS marketing plan. Developing your RSS marketing strategy consists of planning your RSS usage for each marketing function and integrating it with the rest of your marketing mix, and setting the goals for each of the marketing functions.

2. Start using RSS for business intelligence
Conducting business intelligence using RSS is the first step to improving your marketing overall. You will start by finding the right RSS Reader for you, define your business intelligence needs, find the relevant information sources, and implementing the right RSS business intelligence tools.

3. Plan your overall outbound RSS content strategy
Outbound communications using RSS are the most complex part of RSS marketing, with numerous choices available to you. During this step you will define your outbound communications target audiences, define your goals for each of them, decide on your RSS feed publishing model, define your RSS feed content and define your RSS feed content sources.

4. Define your RSS marketing requirements & select your RSS marketing vendor
Defining your RSS marketing technology requirements and selecting the appropriate vendor to supply you with all the features you need to support your strategy.

5. Plan your RSS content strategy on the content-item level
Once you have prepared your overall RSS content strategy you need to plan your RSS content-item level strategy, which essentially means getting the right content in place within the feed to meet your objectives. This consists of defining your writing style, defining the content item structure and defining your calls-to-action.

6. Promote your RSS feeds internally
Simply publishing RSS feeds on your website is not enough to generate subscribers. In this section you will define your RSS feed subscription process, define the RSS feed promotion locations for your feeds, develop the subscription offer and implement the other neccessary technical items to increase your subscription growth.

7. Promote your RSS feeds externally
After setting everything correctly through your own channels, it is neccesary to promote the RSS feeds using external websites as well. This process includes optimizing your RSS feed for the search engines, submitting the feed to the search engines and performing periodic pinging.

8. Measure and optimize your RSS feeds
Measurement and optimization are the two areas that can have the most profound impact on your RSS success. This consists of defining the required metrics, establishing the technical capacities for measurement, measuring and optimizing your content strategy and measuring and optimizing your subscription generation tactics.

9. Use RSS to syndicate your content to other online media
Use RSS to get your content published on other relevant media. The neccessary steps for syndication are defining your target media, defining your RSS feed content, preparing the right syndication tools and promoting your syndication offerings.

10. Use RSS to enhance your website and brand
Enhancing your website is about adding third-party content to enrich the user experience, while enhancing your brand is about providing your own branded RSS Reader.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


I'm Not Spamming You!

... but someone certainly is, using a non-existant MarketingStudies.net e-mail address.

If you receive an e-mail with the subject "Got It, I Think" from tahaseggdzf@marketingstudies.net, or something simillar, it's spam. Not from us though ...

This is how it works:

(a) The spammer finds a number of open relay e-mail servers, which allow the spammer to send e-mail using an e-mail address that's not "hosted" on the e-mail server and often without even having a user account at the server provider.

(b) He or she then uses your e-mail address as the "Reply To" e-mail address in the spam messages and sends out the spam blast.

(c) Everyone receiving these e-mail messages will now think they are coming from your domain, unless of course they have enough knowledge about the subject to check the headers of the e-mail messages received. Those show that the e-mail is in fact not coming from MarketingStudies.net.

The funny thing about this spam is that the spammer didn't include any links in his spam e-mail.

Looking for ways to stop this, but I'm affraid it might be impossible ...

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.

Broadband is Holding Back Web 2.0 Use in Southern Africa

Broadband is Holding Back Web 2.0 Use in Southern Africa
Forward thinking agencies and corporates attend Web PR +

We had 70 attendees in Cape Town and 60 in Johannesburg at the Web PR + conference.

The Cape Town audience was more independents and bloggers and techie types, while the Joburg crowd was more agency and PR related.  As one blogger who attended both sessions remarked the difference in the audience led to a very different conference - as it was a very interactive event.

Louise Marsland, editor of Biz Community, told me that it was one of the most emjoyable conferences she had attended -not just a platform to push services or products, but a genuine sharing of information and ideas.

The biggest drawback to adoption of Web 2.0 and Web PR in South Africa is the lack of connectivity and the cost of broadband.  But when they finally get the second network operator and broadband becomes affordable, it will arrive in a rush.

Good to see both innovators like BMW and the staid old financial institutions attending.


Should Low Traffic Blogs Disable Comments?


Should Low Traffic Blogs Disable Comments?
LintCollector asks - ‘My question relates to comments on a low-traffic blog. If there are very few comments due to lack of readers (not lack of regular posts), can this emphasize the lack of readers and reflect badly on the blog? If high activity on popular blogs conveys an impression that the blog is valued [...]

Arielle Ford, Publicist biography
Arielle Ford has helped launch the careers and create bestselling books for Deepak Chopra; Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Chicken Soup for the Soul series; Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God; Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers; and Dean Ornish, Love and Survival and many, many other notable authors.

How to Leverage the Traffic of an A-List Blog
This Guest Post was written by Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home. When I look back over the last 11 months of how my own blog has grown, it s safe to say that the person who has had the most influence in my traffic and growth has been Darren. Getting to meet him at Elite Retreat [...]

Elite Retreat Update
Well I finally arrived in San Francisco yesterday afternoon and have been bunkered down in the Elite Retreat bunker all day with some pretty cool people. For recaps on what’s going on you can check out a couple of bloggers who are blogging the sessions at Wendy’s blog here and here and Kris’s blog here [...]

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Its Name is Zookoda


Its Name is Zookoda
Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

Viral Marketing
Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others... Published in HindustanTimes.com 13th S ..

The Next Big Thing
Embedded software, Wireless Net, P2P, Real time movies, and Medicare are some of the often heard phrases used to describe the next big thing on the ..

How Some POD Publishers Milk Authors By Angela Hoy, Publisher, BookLocker And WritersWeekly.com
I frequently receive emails from authors who have paid a company to publish their book, but who are later surprised by some of the terms of the contract they signed (that they usually didn't read), and are also flustered by the myriad of add-on services offered by their POD publisher. Understandably, they can't believe a company that they paid to publish their book has taken such liberties. There are some things you should never, ever agree to when paying another company to publish your book. And, there are optional extras that will cost you a small fortune, and will, in all likelihood, never be paid for with any resulting book sales. Here, I'm examining the contracts and add-on services offered by the most popular POD service companies - iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, Lulu and BookLocker (the latter of which I own, by the way). All the information below assumes the book is a standard, black and white interior paperback with similar distribution (through Ingram). You wouldn't believe the ways some of these companies milk authors!

The Corporate Blogging Book
Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Monday, March 26, 2007

Has GoDaddy Started Hiding Whois Contact Information?

Has GoDaddy Started Hiding Whois Contact Information?
I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.  No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising.

I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.� No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising:

[Travis-Smith-Computer:~] nep% whois spacesindoorsandout.com

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET
Name Server: DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
EPP Status: clientDeleteProhibited
EPP Status: clientRenewProhibited
EPP Status: clientTransferProhibited
EPP Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 30-Nov-2006
Creation Date: 28-Jan-2004
Expiration Date: 28-Jan-2007

>>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:43:00 EST <<<

Registrant:
Spaces Indoors & Out

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET

For complete domain details go to:
http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM

It’s only when I go to their Web site that I can get the contact information for Registrant, Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact.

While I’m sure they did this to “cut down on spam” or something like that, I find it an unacceptable tradeoff that makes it harder for me to administer domains.� And I think it might be a violation of their duties as a domain registrar.



Study Shows Blogs Increase Media Attention for Companies

A Cymfony/Porter Novelli study reports that “the majority of companies surveyed (76%) indicated that they have noticed an increase in media attention and/or website traffic as a result of their blog(s).”

Read more and download the report here.



Please Update RSS FEED!
It’s here now, my new blog is ready. Please update your RSS feed to… http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome New blog is located at: http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/ See you there!

It’s here now, my new blog is ready.

Please update your RSS feed to…


http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome

New blog is located at:

http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/

See you there!



Reaching Employees and Customers with Blogging and Podcasting

Got an email today about an interesting sounding event:

How To Use Blogging & Podcasting To Engage Your Employees, Reach Your Customers & Build Your Brand
October 18-20, 2006 – San Francisco, CA

Hear practical lessons learned and case studies from IBM, Southwest Airlines, U.S. Army, Cisco Systems, Mayo Clinic and others.

Link to the detailed agenda:� http://www.aliconferences.com/conferences/blogging_podcasting/1006.html



What Happened to the Adsense Template Page?
I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to [...]

I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to take it down permanently.

The URL is:

http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/adsensetemplates/

I’ve put up some free downloads there for future visitors.

Thanks for your support for sharing the template with your list members and blog readers. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it :)

Bo



Podcast Recommendation
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy! Internet Business Mastery

I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!

Internet Business Mastery



The Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers

According to a study of 100 newspapers done by the Bivings Group, “80 of the nation’s top 100 newspapers offered reporter blogs. On 63 of these blogs, readers could comment on posts written by reporters.”

Get the full report. (PDF)

Found this at the Online News Association’s CyberJournalist.net site.



Talking to Other Dummies Authors

I’m in San Francisco for the first ever Dummies Authors Conference. There are about 50 Dummies authors here, and the day is packed with discussions about marketing books, the uses of agents, and general Dummies best practices. It’s going to be an interesting day! You can check out the agenda here.

There’s been a bunch of press already, but the most exciting news of the day is that the conference is up for being featured on the Evening News with Katie Couric. In fact, you can actually vote to send Steve Hartman to the conference tomorrow by going to http://www.cbsnews.com and clicking on Assignment America. We’re up against some guy who can talk really fast and a California prison program to send female juvenile delinquents to finish school ("Can etiquette, fashion and dance really set a girl straight?"). Wouldn’t you rather get the inside scoop on the For Dummies books? Of course you would. Go vote.

And, if I haven’t convinced you already, check out the other press coverage today:

Here’s a nice quote from the SFGate.com article:

The “dummies” label could be the weirdest aspect of the whole franchise, as the authors are not really supposed to assume their readers are dumb, just uninformed. The publisher, in an official statement on the matter, calls it a “term of endearment.”



Twitter, twitter

Looking for a fun widget to add to your site? I like the new site called “Twitter.”

On Twitter, you quickly share just a little one liner about what you’re currently up to.� Then it notifies your close friends about what you’re up to.� It’s a nice way to feel connected to someone without feeling like you’re intruding.

Susie has added a Twitter badge to this blog, but your twitter status also gets sent via AIM or GTalk, or can be see on twitter itself.

It’s quick to sign up and fun.� Let me know if you join!



Web 2.0 Empty Marketing Term?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)

From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.

What does Web 2.0 mean to you?



New Blog Coming
I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can [...]

I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can easily update old content as well. WordPress 2.1 will be my choice (again) and will use better category system so that you find information more easily.

Also, I’m going to be moving the current mailing system to aweber, a long delayed decision on this. So bear with me during the transition time.

Bo



Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips


Sneak peak of my new blog
It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you. The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a [...]

It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you.

The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a money making site. You will be given the exact steps which I follow to make a profitable website, plus website templates that I use. You will find them under tutorial series. I’m sharing the stuff that you don’t find in paid stuff.

I know the screenshot is blur and too small, but I can’t disclose it yet :) Talk to you soon.



YPN vs Adsense
David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot. Very interesting read, please check it out. Making Money with YPN

David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.

Very interesting read, please check it out.

Making Money with YPN



Some Fundamental Friday Video

This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.



BEA Info


I Can’t Find a Niche Topic that I’m Passionate About!
This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers. “Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or “Should I go where the money is made?” Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being [...]

This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers.

“Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or

“Should I go where the money is made?”

Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being exchanged in that market, that would be wonderful. But it is not common to find one like that.

I’ve been marketing in the niche markets where I have absolutely no idea nor interest in. But I successfully pulled it and made great passive income from them. Because I was willing to sacrifice my comfort zone, I’m now able to go after what I’m passionate about. I no longer have to worry about if my new sites will be making money or not. I have sites that makes me absolutely no money. I made them just because I wanted to share my knowledge and interest with others.

So my answer to this commonly asked question is to go after the money, then you will be able to do what you are passionate about eventually.

Any other opinions welcomed. Please use the comment section.



Protected: Christmas Keywords Extracted from My Own Sites
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

This post is password protected. To get the password, please signup for our newsletter. *FireFox users - please press CTRL + F5 after pressing ’submit’


Please Update RSS FEED!

Please Update RSS FEED!
It’s here now, my new blog is ready. Please update your RSS feed to… http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome New blog is located at: http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/ See you there!

It’s here now, my new blog is ready.

Please update your RSS feed to…


http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome

New blog is located at:

http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/

See you there!



Its Name is Zookoda
Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

The Corporate Blogging Book
Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

I Can’t Find a Niche Topic that I’m Passionate About!
This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers. “Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or “Should I go where the money is made?” Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being [...]

This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers.

“Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or

“Should I go where the money is made?”

Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being exchanged in that market, that would be wonderful. But it is not common to find one like that.

I’ve been marketing in the niche markets where I have absolutely no idea nor interest in. But I successfully pulled it and made great passive income from them. Because I was willing to sacrifice my comfort zone, I’m now able to go after what I’m passionate about. I no longer have to worry about if my new sites will be making money or not. I have sites that makes me absolutely no money. I made them just because I wanted to share my knowledge and interest with others.

So my answer to this commonly asked question is to go after the money, then you will be able to do what you are passionate about eventually.

Any other opinions welcomed. Please use the comment section.



Protected: Christmas Keywords Extracted from My Own Sites
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

This post is password protected. To get the password, please signup for our newsletter. *FireFox users - please press CTRL + F5 after pressing ’submit’



New Blog Coming
I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can [...]

I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can easily update old content as well. WordPress 2.1 will be my choice (again) and will use better category system so that you find information more easily.

Also, I’m going to be moving the current mailing system to aweber, a long delayed decision on this. So bear with me during the transition time.

Bo



YPN vs Adsense
David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot. Very interesting read, please check it out. Making Money with YPN

David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.

Very interesting read, please check it out.

Making Money with YPN



Blogging is Publishing
I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

Podcast Recommendation
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy! Internet Business Mastery

I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!

Internet Business Mastery



1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

Where is Bo?
First of all, I’d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven’t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I’m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with [...]

First of all, I’d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven’t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I’m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with the blog content because I noticed that what my readers need is not “techniques” but rather, motivation and inspiration. I’ve tried to do both, and was kinda lost, to be honest. So, in 2007, I will make case studies and share the experience with you. I hope this will motivate you and inspire you to go after the things you desired to achieve.

Anyway, the main reason why I wasn’t able to come near the PC was that I’m in the progress of moving to a new house. To be more exact, we are moving back to one of my investment houses. We are going to sell the house we are currently living and move back to the one which has a big basement.

The reason for this move is to make a physical office for my online business company. Marketing Syndrome Inc. will have its physical office at a basement of my house :) Currently, I’m busy doing the renovation of the house and the office. It’s about 10 minutes from my current house and I’m making a trip daily to do some work. I have to hire contractors for some tasks, but I’m doing the most of the work myself. Ah! I know what you are thinking! Outsource! well, no. I’m doing it because I love doing house renovation with my wife. It’s our only hobby that we both enjoy doing :)

So, here is what I’m up to. If your goal is to earn a full-time income from niche marketing, working from home, make sure to come back to my blog. Because you will learn everything about it from this blog. I have a lot to share with you in this field and I barely scratched the surface. I haven’t share with you anything about my main affiliate campaigns that bring me the major portion of my income. You will read all about it for free in 2007.

I’m also exploring new ways to bring passive income online consistently, so I will be sharing this with you also. The software I’m currently exploring is called “Build A Niche Store“, which is believe to be a very effective tool for niche marketers. I will be testing this software thoroughly in January and February. So expect to hear more about it in the next posts.



Sneak peak of my new blog
It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you. The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a [...]

It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you.

The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a money making site. You will be given the exact steps which I follow to make a profitable website, plus website templates that I use. You will find them under tutorial series. I’m sharing the stuff that you don’t find in paid stuff.

I know the screenshot is blur and too small, but I can’t disclose it yet :) Talk to you soon.



What Happened to the Adsense Template Page?
I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to [...]

I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to take it down permanently.

The URL is:

http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/adsensetemplates/

I’ve put up some free downloads there for future visitors.

Thanks for your support for sharing the template with your list members and blog readers. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it :)

Bo



WordPress 2.1 is Ready
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it. Download WordPress 2.1.

Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.

Download WordPress 2.1.



Link popularity and tools for link building


Link popularity and tools for link building
Link popularity and link quality are important because all search engines consider them as a part of their ranking algorithms, says Puneet Mehrotra ..

Generating Revenue Through Advertising


How To Make An Absolute Fortune in the Information Products Business by Shawn Casey

Which search engines to target?
Some search engine ti

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Using Testimonials Effectively

Using Testimonials Effectively
People seem to have a need to know what others think before they place an order for a product or service. They tend to ask everyone they know, both offline and in forums. They will often even research the net for reviews and testimonials. Unfortunately, testimonial letters have gotten a bad rap because of all [...]

Keeping Group Email Straight
People often ask me is how I go about keeping group email straight. The truth is that I really do organize email using the same methods that I teach the members of my online groups and classes to use. By setting rules to make sure that every email goes straight to the folder it belongs in, [...]

The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

Tips for Buying a New Computer
If I would have only known then, what I know now. How many times have we all said something like this when our computer is giving us trouble, or just isn’t designed to do what we want it to do? Making mistakes when we are learning to run an online business are inevitable and a normal [...]

Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

Best Web Development Tips
One of the best teachers that any of us can have is the voice of experience. Over the years, the tips that I have learned from others has been invaluable to me. When it comes to learning web development skills, the little bits of information we pick up here and there can make all the [...]

Shopping Carts and SEO
True shopping carts (those that are added to your already existing website) do not need to be SEO friendly. Other than the buy now or add to cart buttons, which lead to the actual payment page, they only come into effect once your customer decides to make a purchase. Unless a store is selling literally thousands [...]

Small Town Redneck Country Girl
There was a small town country girl who had a passion for making gifts and giving them to anyone who wanted them. She didn’t do it for the attention. She handed out the gifts in a private area, outside of the public eye. She did not give the gifts to hear words of thanks or [...]

SAME PRINTER and SAME DISTRIBUTION...yet DIFFERENT Setup Fees?


SAME PRINTER and SAME DISTRIBUTION...yet DIFFERENT Setup Fees?
  • BookLocker: $392 (deduct $175 if submitting your own cover)
  • Lulu $465
  • iUniverse $499 (includes 5 free copies)
  • AuthorHouse $917
  • Trafford: $1399 (includes 40 free copies)
  • Xlibris $1599 (includes paperback and hardcover publication plus 10 free paperback copies)






Prices based on least expensive package offered by each publisher on similar offers targeting U.S. authors. Fees include setup, original cover design, free print proof, ebook creation, a listing on the publisher's website and distribution by Ingram. NOTE: Many companies offer perks that others don't and some try to upsell authors on extraneous services. Study each publisher carefully before making your choice. To read more about what BookLocker can do for you: http://publishing.booklocker.com

Editor's Procrastination Shouldn't Be Your Problem
Hi Angela, What do you do with difficult editors? I just ran into two situations with two different editors that have set my teeth on edge. It's one of these situations where their procrastination becomes my problem. Essentially, I messed up by agreeing to do an article with a very short deadline, but I did let the editor know that I was concerned about my interviewees not cooperating with me in such a short time period.

Whispers And Warnings For March 21st
McGraw-Hill and author Jan Goldberg - Writer alleges copyright infringement. WritersWeekly loses patience after McGraw-Hill gives us the run-around. Author Jan Goldberg never responded to WritersWeekly or to the writer. Creative TECHniques / creativetechniquesmag.com / All American Crafts Inc. / allamericancrafts.com - Writer alleges she's owed $350; publisher got upset with writer and terminated the contract...after the articles were finished and submitted. What do you think? Does the publisher owe the writer the money? WritersWeekly would love your opinion on this one! Deep Magazine / DeepMag.com / Kelly Degnan - Writer alleges she's owed $250 and editor says she's no loger employed by this magazine.

Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

Free Book Promotion Site

http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers

Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

Smart Social Media Thinking
How to corral that free-wheeling user-generated content

pontiac social media sitePrevailing wisdom says you can't control the message anymore.  User-generated content has a life of it's own and any attempt to make it into a marketing or PR vehicle will backfire.

And have we not seen some spectaular examples of doing it wrong?

Pontiac's social media site created in tandem with Yahoo is a much smarter approach. Their new community hub on Yahoo is designed to tap into the "street-level" energy of fans from all its active and retired brands by uniting and introducing the hundreds of offline and online groups already in existence. No overt marketing will be present - the idea is for it to be found and spread organically. .

Now there's a thought - gather up all the consumer generated buzz already going on and offer it a home. Make it possible for all your evangelists to interact and find each other. Give them more social media tools so it's easier for them to  create and share content .

Underground allows users to share photos and videos of cars using Flickr and Yahoo Video. A Yahoo Answers zone enables knowledge sharing. An aggregated list of Pontiac clubs in the physical world and on Yahoo Groups allows users to connect offline and online. An opinion poll, Pontiac-hosted blog "Inside Track" and the "Pontiac Informer," an aggregation tool for blogs and news, round out the offering.

Now that's smart marketing and PR in the Web 2.0 world.



Publicity for Books


Disney's Content Strategy to Reach Moms Online
Entertainment Behemoth takes the needs of their online audience to heart.

disney online resource site for parents momsMoms are increasingly turning to the Internet for answers to everything from problems with teething babies to financing college. Based on research into their online audience Disney is launching a new website aimed at providing these answers the AP reports. 

Web-savvy and 32-million strong, U.S. mothers spend almost as much time online as women as a group, according to eMarketer's new report, "Moms Online: Parenting With Web 2.0."

And they're not just on children and parenting sites. The biggest opportunity for marketers targeting moms online is social networking sites, says the report.

Disney has plunged right in to this space with their new website Family.com

Family intends to be a one-stop site for parents, especially mothers, providing everything from Internet search to user-generated articles on key topics such as education and food, and, eventually, a 'ParentPedia,' a compilation of information on 1,000 topics that can be expanded by users.

Parents have become a larger part of Disney's online audience, accounting for nearly half of the 25 million unique visits per month to the Disney.com site, the company said. Most of those are moms. 

Disney surveyed 30,000 mothers over the past year to find out what they are looking for online. The openness of the new site along with trusted content vouched for by Disney is what moms say they want..

The site will be in beta till the summer.



News vs Entertainment : a PR crisis?
Desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations.

Gerald Baron, Founder and CEO, PIER System/AudienceCentral; Author, "Now Is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News" made some pithy comments about the 'news as entertainment' trend and its effect on PR in today's Daily Dog.

What's wrong with this trend?

  • Too little money is available for good reporting.
  • Wall Street expectations destroying news organizations.
  • Audiences switching rapidly to new media for which there is insufficient revenue to support real journalism.
  • The line between amateurs and professional journalists is blurred and it is likely the public largely doesn't care.
  • News is entertainment and needs to compete on the basis of what the audience wants—not what is good journalism or what should be covered.

"Public relations professionals need to understand that these desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations," says Bacon. "They need to be able to respond fast, to be aggressive in attacking misinformation and bad reporting and most importantly, they need to grab onto the incredible opportunities they have to talk directly to the people whose opinion about the organization matters most to their future. Talk quick, talk with complete honestly and talk directly."

How does a web content strategy figure in all this?

"Today's Internet tools including virtual communication centers, blogs, and communicator-controlled websites all make that possible. The desperate media environment makes it essential," advises Bacon.  And he is 100% correct..

How do you do it?

If you do not yet have a section of your website that can be controlled by the communication department this should be a priority.  The tools available today make this a no-brainer.

RSS enable this section of the site, so that your content can be syndicated across the Net.  Feeds also allow you to reach subcribers fast...

Use RSS feeds and other tools to monitor the blogs and conversations so you have your finger on the pulse and can pick up and respond to any comments or issues right away.



Its Name is Zookoda
Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers


Telcos Fail to Capitalize on Mobile Web 2.0
Telecoms companies are failing to make the most of the growing popularity of the online information-sharing services of "Web 2.0", according to new research 'Web re-loaded: Driving convergence in the real world.' by global consultancy Arthur D. Little.

This new report places users and user generated content in the spotlight yet again.  Yet it seems US Telcos have not yet got the Web 2.0 message.

"In order to harness and monetize Web 2.0 the Telcos will have to rapidly address the needs of this community" says Martyn Roetter, Director of Arthur D. Little's US TIME. "Younger Europeans are already showing their readiness to interact on the move, with 38% of them accessing email from mobile devices, while Google launched Gmail for mobile in November last year. Telecommunications businesses now need to offer access to the established web 2.0 services, for both communication and for the fulfillment of their wider social needs while on the move."

The dilemma Telcos face is whether they should build their own Web 2.0 platforms or engage with established sites such as flickr etc, says the report.

One good example of collaboraiton is the Pontiac Underground site that partnered with Yahoo! and now offers access to all the Yahoo social media sites in one branded place.

Whatever they do, they should do it soon. the race goes to the swift and The Cluetrain is not waiting for the laggers.

.



The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

Publicity for Your Book


Getting in Newspapers . . . Easy for our clients


BEA Info


BEA Book Expo America: Good for Independent Publishers?


Video Success Online Depends on Content Strategy
Looking for viral online buzz? It's all about the content

viral video you tube

Andrew Foote of Peppercom has some sage advoce for firms looking to success with viral video and social media as part of their internet marketing strategy.:

Content is king in this game. More often than not, the quality of viral content takes a backseat to the marketing mandate.

Foote gives examples of how to get it right and how to get it very wrong. Dove's Evolution video was a winner, but their recent Super Bowl Commercial effort sank like a stone under a deluge of negative comments.

The bottom line is that the message has to be exceptional, says Foote. I'd also add the importance of originality, authenticity and relevance. Don't force a viral marketing idea because it sounds cool—make sure it jives with the demographic you're trying to reach

For some reason when we are faced with a new medium we tend to throw all the PR basics out with the bathwater.  Social media is very much like live communication - it's not a one-way, top down 'push' medium. You have to understand your sudience and deliver content that works for them. 

Yes, it was much less threatening to deiver content in the 'old' ways - no-one was talking back.  Social media tools make it possible for your audience to give you instant feedback - they'll let you (and the rest of the world) know, in no uncertain terms, if you get it wrong.

Here are Foote's tips for successul viral video online:

  • Don't force viral marketing concepts if they don't fit the brand essence.
  • Do your homework on what flies and what dies. Live the video sharing space.
  • Content is everything. Bring on producers who can push the buttons of buzz.
  • Take risks. Beware of corporate filters that will dilute the quality of the content.
  • Test it. If eight out of 10 people aren't cracking up, memorized or amazed, head back to the drawing board.
  • Cast a wide net. YouTube is center stage, but don't forget the other sites: Revver, iFilm, Myspace, etc.

    It's stll about content strategy and delivering the right message to the right audience, via the right channels.



  • Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
    Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

    The Corporate Blogging Book
    Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

    Why I haven't been blogging this week
    I am in Cape Town visiting family

    Camps Bay Cape townAs I sit at a pavement cafe in Camps Bay drinking  red Africa tea and hanging out with my son and his family, blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

    But tomorrow the nose goes back to the grindstone.  I am speaking at the WebPR conference here in Cape Town.  then I am off to Johannesburg to do another one March 2nd. I will be back in LA on March 8th..



    Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips


    1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
    One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

    Ideagoras


    Ideagoras
    The Globe and Mail is running a series based on a forthcoming book, Wikinomics. Today they've published the second in the series, Ideagoras. Here's an excerpt: In addition to broadening and deepening its own proprietary networks, P&G searches for innovations in Web-enabled marketplaces such as InnoCentive, NineSigma, and yet2.com. These combined efforts led to hundreds of new products on the market, some of which turned out to be hits. In...

    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips

    Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips


    Internet Audiences Growing: How Will You Respond?

    Blogging is Publishing
    I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

    BEA Info


    The Corporate Blogging Book
    Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

    BEA Book Expo America: Good for Independent Publishers?


    Million Dollar Product Creation Secrets just released!

    BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers


    The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
    E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

    When Works Pass Into The Public Domain

    Frank Kern Audio and PDF Leaked to Public

    1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
    One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

    How To Make An Absolute Fortune in the Information Products Business by Shawn Casey

    Getting in Newspapers . . . Easy for our clients


    Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
    Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

    Publicity for Books


    A Few Positions Have Opened up at Content Site Builder

    Its Name is Zookoda
    Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

    Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
    You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

    $10,652.00 in Bonuses for Shawn Casey's "How To Make An Absolute Fortune..."

    Online Shoppers Ask for More Detailed Copywriting


    Online Shoppers Ask for More Detailed Copywriting
    A recent survey proved "68% [of visitors] want the ability to 'feel' merchandise through better imagery, more product descriptions and details." Learn how to write copy that gives customers what they need.

    Headline Makeovers with Wizard Clark
    More headline wizardry from Copyblogger Brian Clark. If you're like me, you learn a lot when people explain the options and decisions. I picked up a couple of tips on writing stronger headlines by using more powerful words. 1. The...

    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    Saturday, March 24, 2007

    Publicity for Books

    Publicity for Books


    5 Phrases to Close the Sale on the Phone or by Email
    I hadn't heard the term presale closing phrase before I read it on Mitch Harpz' blog this morning. It's when you get an email or call from someone asking questions about a product or program. Sometimes I get the feeling...

    links for 2007-03-22
    David Finch: Developing the Work Ethic to be Effective in This New Media Space "A few thoughts on developing the work ethic to become the voice you are intended to be." (tags: leadership workethic Blogs) World gets 21st Century totem...

    The State of the Mobile Reader Market
    Judi Sohn has a great post on the sate of the mobile RSS reader market. Her take is that she would love to take the full browser version of Google Reader and sync it with the mobile HTML version of...

    Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips


    Getting in Newspapers . . . Easy for our clients


    Headline Makeovers with Wizard Clark
    More headline wizardry from Copyblogger Brian Clark. If you're like me, you learn a lot when people explain the options and decisions. I picked up a couple of tips on writing stronger headlines by using more powerful words. 1. The...

    BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers


    BEA Info


    Skimmers Need Subheadings and Lists
    Michael Stelzner asks How Do You Capture Skimmers over on his Writing White Papers blog today, and it got me thinking. It's true, everyone's busy, and admit it, we don't read things carefully, we skim. So what's a writer to...

    Publicity for Your Book


    links for 2007-03-19
    The A-List dirty little secret | WinExtra Steven Hodson calculates that advertisers "own" most of the top 100 blogs. (tags: Blogs Advertising) Weather Channel Gadget Slick widget/gadget from The Weather Channel that provides local weather forecasts based upon city or...

    Google Home Page Gets Themes
    Google has added a little link to the personalized home page that presents the user with themes they can select for their page. Right now there are only a handful of options - beach, bus stop, Google, etc. However, one...

    Twitterholic
    You know you're addicted when you land on a list like this! Twitterholic is a fun resource and it has an RSS feed too. By the way, Twitter is very slow today. They need a five day outage and everyone...

    Spring Flood!


    Spring Flood!
    After bragging last week about our temperatures getting up into the 50's, we had a massive winter storm on Friday night. We only got about six inches of snow but then we were deluged with ice and then rain and flooding. On Saturday morning, we literally had a muddy river of cold water flowing down our street, complete with ice chunks.

    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    Shopping Carts and SEO

    Shopping Carts and SEO
    True shopping carts (those that are added to your already existing website) do not need to be SEO friendly. Other than the buy now or add to cart buttons, which lead to the actual payment page, they only come into effect once your customer decides to make a purchase. Unless a store is selling literally thousands [...]

    Favorite Basic Computer Tips
    As small business owners, none of us can afford to lose time dealing with computer issues. Arming ourselves with knowledge about our computers and operating systems can go a long way in preventing issues from happening to begin with. A great place to start learning the basics about your computer and operating system is to sit [...]

    Are You the Biggest Difference?
    Are you the biggest difference for your business? Many years ago, a motivational speaker told me that the surest way to financial success was to find something that I absolutely love doing and then find a way to get paid for doing it. This is probably the best advice that I have ever received, and advice [...]

    links for 2007-03-24
    TwitterBuzz - The most popular links on Twitter - URL Popularity "TwitterBuzz shows you what people using Twitter, a microblogging service, are linking to. It's updated constantly" (tags: twitter zeitgeist) Revso Cool new web 2.0 blog. (tags: Blogs newvoices Web2.0)...

    links for 2007-03-20
    The Credibility Branding Blog A blog about marketing through credibility. (tags: trust Blogs Marketing newvoices) Magazine publishers see future, but no profit, in shift to Internet - IHT (tags: Magazines Media) Productivity up 200%, Twitter is down « Scobleizer -...

    links for 2007-03-18
    Blue Dot: Dot the Web. Connect with Friends. (tags: tagging socialbookmarking) Twitter / nyit I like how the school used Twitter to let people know they are closing b/c of the weather. (tags: twitter) Twitter / CNETNews CNET on Twitter....

    AttentionMeter Compares Alexa, Quantcast, Compete
    Here's a neat web application that triangulates traffic graphs from Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast. It's called the Attentionmeter. I am not sure about the name but I can live with it. Even better, there's a handy dandy bookmarklet (yum, I...

    Expression Web Designer Beta
    I had been anxious to check out Microsoft’s new Expression Web Designer, not because I had any issues with FrontPage 2003, but because I like playing with new programs. I was thrilled when I received the download notice for the initial private beta, which they have since offered to the general public. I am probably not [...]

    The Risk of AdSense Revenue
    Generic advertisements such as Google AdSense absolutely do not belong on a professional business website. No matter how you look at it, it will not help improve your business and may very well have a devastating impact. Is it really worth the risk? Those people who have no clue what Google AdSense is, will likely become [...]

    Blogspot is 75% Spam
    Google better tighten up its system or the entire Blogger platform will tank from a lack of trust. According to a new Microsoft Research study, Blogspot - the free platform tied to Blogger - is among the top doorway domains...

    Keeping Group Email Straight
    People often ask me is how I go about keeping group email straight. The truth is that I really do organize email using the same methods that I teach the members of my online groups and classes to use. By setting rules to make sure that every email goes straight to the folder it belongs in, [...]

    Tips for Buying a New Computer
    If I would have only known then, what I know now. How many times have we all said something like this when our computer is giving us trouble, or just isn’t designed to do what we want it to do? Making mistakes when we are learning to run an online business are inevitable and a normal [...]

    Throwing In The Towel
    I believe that the number one way to find financial success is to first find what you love doing, and then find a way to get paid for doing it. I see people that spend weeks asking everyone they talk to for online business opportunities that they can make money at. It never crosses their [...]

    Google Home Page Gets Themes
    Google has added a little link to the personalized home page that presents the user with themes they can select for their page. Right now there are only a handful of options - beach, bus stop, Google, etc. However, one...

    Blogging is Publishing
    I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

    Small Town Redneck Country Girl
    There was a small town country girl who had a passion for making gifts and giving them to anyone who wanted them. She didn’t do it for the attention. She handed out the gifts in a private area, outside of the public eye. She did not give the gifts to hear words of thanks or [...]

    The Corporate Blogging Book
    Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

    Google BlogRank
    Ionut Alex Chitu continues to do a stellar job tracking Google. This time he explains how Google ranks blogs in its blog search engine....

    1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign


    1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
    One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    Keeping Group Email Straight

    Keeping Group Email Straight
    People often ask me is how I go about keeping group email straight. The truth is that I really do organize email using the same methods that I teach the members of my online groups and classes to use. By setting rules to make sure that every email goes straight to the folder it belongs in, [...]

    Expression Web Designer Beta
    I had been anxious to check out Microsoft’s new Expression Web Designer, not because I had any issues with FrontPage 2003, but because I like playing with new programs. I was thrilled when I received the download notice for the initial private beta, which they have since offered to the general public. I am probably not [...]

    The Risk of AdSense Revenue
    Generic advertisements such as Google AdSense absolutely do not belong on a professional business website. No matter how you look at it, it will not help improve your business and may very well have a devastating impact. Is it really worth the risk? Those people who have no clue what Google AdSense is, will likely become [...]

    Five Things About Cricket
    Okay, bear with me for an odd ball post here … John Scott tagged me, so I am supposed to come up with five things that y’all don’t know about me and post it here on my blog. I will find a way to pay you back for this someday John! Considering the fact that [...]

    Favorite Basic Computer Tips
    As small business owners, none of us can afford to lose time dealing with computer issues. Arming ourselves with knowledge about our computers and operating systems can go a long way in preventing issues from happening to begin with. A great place to start learning the basics about your computer and operating system is to sit [...]

    Visit the Book Publicity Gallery to see Documents and Photos of Successful Book Publicity Tours and Information.
    Visit this link for a whole gallery full of scans from the NY Times and Publisher's Weekly.

    Viral Marketing
    Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others... Published in HindustanTimes.com 13th S ..

    Make It Easy to Order Right Now!
    Why is it that online business owners spend countless hours following every possible search engine optimization and marketing technique to get me to visit their website, and yet make it so difficult for me to actually make a purchase? Haven’t they realized that if they don’t make it easy to order right now, the odds are [...]

    Tips for a New Website
    It\'s not easy not easy to promote your website or get sales initially. Following the tips given in this column can at least give your Web site ..

    The Next Big Thing
    Embedded software, Wireless Net, P2P, Real time movies, and Medicare are some of the often heard phrases used to describe the next big thing on the ..

    Best Web Development Tips
    One of the best teachers that any of us can have is the voice of experience. Over the years, the tips that I have learned from others has been invaluable to me. When it comes to learning web development skills, the little bits of information we pick up here and there can make all the [...]

    Small Town Redneck Country Girl
    There was a small town country girl who had a passion for making gifts and giving them to anyone who wanted them. She didn’t do it for the attention. She handed out the gifts in a private area, outside of the public eye. She did not give the gifts to hear words of thanks or [...]

    Friday, March 23, 2007

    Please Update RSS FEED!


    Please Update RSS FEED!
    It&#8217;s here now, my new blog is ready. Please update your RSS feed to&#8230; http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome New blog is located at: http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/ See you there!

    Which search engines to target?
    Some search engine ti

    RSS Marketing With Christopher Knight: Use E-mail to Promote RSS

    How does EzineArticles.com, one of the largest websites to help you syndicate your content, use RSS for their marketing?

    To answer this question, we interviewed Christopher Knight for the 2007 edition of the RSS marketing e-book (coming shortly). But if you want to know more, click here to read Christopher's summary.

    BTW - did you know that EzineArticles.com publishes more than 40,000 RSS feeds?

    How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
    Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
    Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.


    Where is Bo?
    First of all, I&#8217;d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven&#8217;t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I&#8217;m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with [...]

    Split Run Testing
    If you are a webpreneur, split testing is a definite recommendation. Not only it increases sales but also lets go of unnecessary graphics and copy. A ..

    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    WordPress 2.1 is Ready

    WordPress 2.1 is Ready
    Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it. Download WordPress 2.1.

    Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.

    Download WordPress 2.1.



    SEO: Gaining Top Placement In The Warm Markets
    Search engines become smarter by the minute. It is no longer the sheer placement of numerous keywords on a single page. There is the correct placement of anchored text, the specific Meta tags, the wa... [Author: Jeffrey Greer - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    New Blog Coming
    I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can [...]

    I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can easily update old content as well. WordPress 2.1 will be my choice (again) and will use better category system so that you find information more easily.

    Also, I’m going to be moving the current mailing system to aweber, a long delayed decision on this. So bear with me during the transition time.

    Bo



    1-2-All Email Marketing by Active Campaign
    One of the tools that a self-publishing author must have is good email marketing software. I highly recommend 1-2-All which was developed by Active Campaign.

    Keys to Increasing Website Traffic
    The life and blood of any online business is one simple word �traffic�. It�s your life and blood. Let�s face it, it�s quite simple these days to build a website, even without any HTML knowledge. It�s... [Author: Mark Taylor - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

    Podcast Recommendation
    I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy! Internet Business Mastery

    I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!

    Internet Business Mastery



    The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
    E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

    Its Name is Zookoda
    Zookoda is the new leader in professional email marketing for bloggers. It gives you better control on the look and feel of how your feed is sent to your subscribers. The program is similar to what you see in newsletter...

    The Corporate Blogging Book
    Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

    Blogging is Publishing
    I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

    Google TrustRank and the Google Sandbox
    Google's TrustRank and Google's Sandbox filters are often discussed in forums. How to manipulate these filters is widely debated and since google still recently is consitently pulling over 45 percent... [Author: Joe Whyte - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    YPN vs Adsense
    David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot. Very interesting read, please check it out. Making Money with YPN

    David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.

    Very interesting read, please check it out.

    Making Money with YPN



    I Can’t Find a Niche Topic that I’m Passionate About!
    This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers. “Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or “Should I go where the money is made?” Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being [...]

    This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers.

    “Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or

    “Should I go where the money is made?”

    Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being exchanged in that market, that would be wonderful. But it is not common to find one like that.

    I’ve been marketing in the niche markets where I have absolutely no idea nor interest in. But I successfully pulled it and made great passive income from them. Because I was willing to sacrifice my comfort zone, I’m now able to go after what I’m passionate about. I no longer have to worry about if my new sites will be making money or not. I have sites that makes me absolutely no money. I made them just because I wanted to share my knowledge and interest with others.

    So my answer to this commonly asked question is to go after the money, then you will be able to do what you are passionate about eventually.

    Any other opinions welcomed. Please use the comment section.



    Link Building Is One Of The Hardest Things To Do
    "In the time spent roaming the Internet jumping from website to website, it strikes me that links is the only real method of travel. With a rather large number of directories and link schemes that ... [Author: Paul Walton - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    Do You Know the Fastest Way to Get a High Page Ranking?
    There are millions upon millions of websites on the internet. The majority of these site's have poor page rankings. Is your site one of them? Would you like to increase your page ranking? Silly quest... [Author: Terry Morris - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    Submit Your Site to Google
    As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google! Even if you haven't built your site, or thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven't full... [Author: Montri Sitthichock - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
    Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

    Process on Optimizing your Site through Keywords
    There are a lot of things to analyze on your site before you start optimizing your site. Such things are your site overview, nature of business, home page, site dimension and number of pages, product... [Author: Kristine Joy Francisco - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

    Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
    You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

    How To Make Your Web Site And Affiliate Marketing Compatible
    People who look for income opportunities, do often come across the idea of affiliate marketing. At first sight, it looks like it's just to have a banner posted on their web site to generate income. ... [Author: Ove Nordkvist - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    Nameplates - Industrial Utility
    Various industries depend upon nameplates for range of applications. The industrial nameplates have unique properties, which make them withstand harsher operating environments and these properties va... [Author: Navpreet Aujla - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    SEO or PPC - Deciding Which Type Of Search Engine Marketing Your Business Needs
    Before you get started with the Search Engines you should decide which of the two major Search Engine marketing strategies will work best for your site. This will help you to stay on track and not wa... [Author: Chris Taylor - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    Writers and Bloggers for Hire


    Writers and Bloggers for Hire
    I've been researching ways to monetize your blog, in preparation for an Ask the Experts panel at Business BlogHer this week in NYC. And I'm discovering all these websites and lists where writers can find additional freelance work. Check out...

    Customized Newsletter Articles You Can Use
    Attention executive coaches, management consultants, OD specialists: If you want help finding good material for your newsletters, Customized Newsletter Services has a catalog of articles you can buy and rewrite for your purposes. The research is already done for you,...

    BlogHer Business Conference: Things to Do in NYC
    Denise and I decided to spend the weekend just for fun in Manhattan. I haven't researched yet, but on my list of things to do would be shopping, museums and a good play. I'm wondering what good plays there are...

    Sneak peak of my new blog
    It&#8217;s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I&#8217;m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you. The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a [...]

    Nameplates - Industrial Utility
    Various industries depend upon nameplates for range of applications. The industrial nameplates have unique properties, which make them withstand harsher operating environments and these properties va... [Author: Navpreet Aujla - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    Keeping Group Email Straight

    Keeping Group Email Straight
    People often ask me is how I go about keeping group email straight. The truth is that I really do organize email using the same methods that I teach the members of my online groups and classes to use. By setting rules to make sure that every email goes straight to the folder it belongs in, [...]

    links for 2007-03-23
    Google share gains quicken in U.S. search market - Yahoo! News "Google's share of the U.S. Web search market grew to 48.1 percent in February from 47.5 percent in January" (tags: Google Search Stats) Zoho Blogs » Announcing Zoho Meeting...

    The Next Google Update
    I would venture to guess that one of the most common questions on any webmaster forum involves someone asking, “When is the next Google update?” Although they are probably asking about visible PageRank updates in the Google toolbar, the answer involves a bit more than that. Visible PageRank is what you see in your Google toolbar. [...]

    Shopping Carts and SEO
    True shopping carts (those that are added to your already existing website) do not need to be SEO friendly. Other than the buy now or add to cart buttons, which lead to the actual payment page, they only come into effect once your customer decides to make a purchase. Unless a store is selling literally thousands [...]

    The Risk of AdSense Revenue
    Generic advertisements such as Google AdSense absolutely do not belong on a professional business website. No matter how you look at it, it will not help improve your business and may very well have a devastating impact. Is it really worth the risk? Those people who have no clue what Google AdSense is, will likely become [...]

    Twitterholic
    You know you're addicted when you land on a list like this! Twitterholic is a fun resource and it has an RSS feed too. By the way, Twitter is very slow today. They need a five day outage and everyone...

    Thursday, March 22, 2007

    Skimmers Need Subheadings and Lists


    Skimmers Need Subheadings and Lists
    Michael Stelzner asks How Do You Capture Skimmers over on his Writing White Papers blog today, and it got me thinking. It's true, everyone's busy, and admit it, we don't read things carefully, we skim. So what's a writer to...

    BlogHer Business Conference: Things to Do in NYC
    Denise and I decided to spend the weekend just for fun in Manhattan. I haven't researched yet, but on my list of things to do would be shopping, museums and a good play. I'm wondering what good plays there are...

    5 Phrases to Close the Sale on the Phone or by Email
    I hadn't heard the term presale closing phrase before I read it on Mitch Harpz' blog this morning. It's when you get an email or call from someone asking questions about a product or program. Sometimes I get the feeling...

    Info Products Rule: Listen Up!
    Blogging and Beyond: Episode 10Promoting Your Business with Information Productswith guest expert Paulette Ensign of Tips Booklets International. There are dozens of ways to create info products quickly and without a lot of expense. Check out Paulette's programs and her...

    Million Dollar Product Creation Secrets just released!


    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    Smart Social Media Thinking

    Smart Social Media Thinking
    How to corral that free-wheeling user-generated content

    pontiac social media sitePrevailing wisdom says you can't control the message anymore.  User-generated content has a life of it's own and any attempt to make it into a marketing or PR vehicle will backfire.

    And have we not seen some spectaular examples of doing it wrong?

    Pontiac's social media site created in tandem with Yahoo is a much smarter approach. Their new community hub on Yahoo is designed to tap into the "street-level" energy of fans from all its active and retired brands by uniting and introducing the hundreds of offline and online groups already in existence. No overt marketing will be present - the idea is for it to be found and spread organically. .

    Now there's a thought - gather up all the consumer generated buzz already going on and offer it a home. Make it possible for all your evangelists to interact and find each other. Give them more social media tools so it's easier for them to  create and share content .

    Underground allows users to share photos and videos of cars using Flickr and Yahoo Video. A Yahoo Answers zone enables knowledge sharing. An aggregated list of Pontiac clubs in the physical world and on Yahoo Groups allows users to connect offline and online. An opinion poll, Pontiac-hosted blog "Inside Track" and the "Pontiac Informer," an aggregation tool for blogs and news, round out the offering.

    Now that's smart marketing and PR in the Web 2.0 world.



    Why I haven't been blogging this week
    I am in Cape Town visiting family

    Camps Bay Cape townAs I sit at a pavement cafe in Camps Bay drinking  red Africa tea and hanging out with my son and his family, blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

    But tomorrow the nose goes back to the grindstone.  I am speaking at the WebPR conference here in Cape Town.  then I am off to Johannesburg to do another one March 2nd. I will be back in LA on March 8th..



    Talking to Other Dummies Authors

    I’m in San Francisco for the first ever Dummies Authors Conference. There are about 50 Dummies authors here, and the day is packed with discussions about marketing books, the uses of agents, and general Dummies best practices. It’s going to be an interesting day! You can check out the agenda here.

    There’s been a bunch of press already, but the most exciting news of the day is that the conference is up for being featured on the Evening News with Katie Couric. In fact, you can actually vote to send Steve Hartman to the conference tomorrow by going to http://www.cbsnews.com and clicking on Assignment America. We’re up against some guy who can talk really fast and a California prison program to send female juvenile delinquents to finish school ("Can etiquette, fashion and dance really set a girl straight?"). Wouldn’t you rather get the inside scoop on the For Dummies books? Of course you would. Go vote.

    And, if I haven’t convinced you already, check out the other press coverage today:

    Here’s a nice quote from the SFGate.com article:

    The “dummies” label could be the weirdest aspect of the whole franchise, as the authors are not really supposed to assume their readers are dumb, just uninformed. The publisher, in an official statement on the matter, calls it a “term of endearment.”



    How to write an effective copy
    Finding just the right words to describe your product or service isn\'t as easy as it looks, says Puneet Mehrotra. Published on 12th October ..

    The Next Big Thing
    Embedded software, Wireless Net, P2P, Real time movies, and Medicare are some of the often heard phrases used to describe the next big thing on the ..

    Which search engines to target?
    Some search engine ti

    Broadband is Holding Back Web 2.0 Use in Southern Africa
    Forward thinking agencies and corporates attend Web PR +

    We had 70 attendees in Cape Town and 60 in Johannesburg at the Web PR + conference.

    The Cape Town audience was more independents and bloggers and techie types, while the Joburg crowd was more agency and PR related.  As one blogger who attended both sessions remarked the difference in the audience led to a very different conference - as it was a very interactive event.

    Louise Marsland, editor of Biz Community, told me that it was one of the most emjoyable conferences she had attended -not just a platform to push services or products, but a genuine sharing of information and ideas.

    The biggest drawback to adoption of Web 2.0 and Web PR in South Africa is the lack of connectivity and the cost of broadband.  But when they finally get the second network operator and broadband becomes affordable, it will arrive in a rush.

    Good to see both innovators like BMW and the staid old financial institutions attending.



    Reaching Employees and Customers with Blogging and Podcasting

    Got an email today about an interesting sounding event:

    How To Use Blogging & Podcasting To Engage Your Employees, Reach Your Customers & Build Your Brand
    October 18-20, 2006 – San Francisco, CA

    Hear practical lessons learned and case studies from IBM, Southwest Airlines, U.S. Army, Cisco Systems, Mayo Clinic and others.

    Link to the detailed agenda:� http://www.aliconferences.com/conferences/blogging_podcasting/1006.html



    Content is King on a Website
    Content can make or break a website. The power of the written word has been witnessed many a time. Products have become success stories, resumes trans ..

    News vs Entertainment : a PR crisis?
    Desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations.

    Gerald Baron, Founder and CEO, PIER System/AudienceCentral; Author, "Now Is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News" made some pithy comments about the 'news as entertainment' trend and its effect on PR in today's Daily Dog.

    What's wrong with this trend?

    • Too little money is available for good reporting.
    • Wall Street expectations destroying news organizations.
    • Audiences switching rapidly to new media for which there is insufficient revenue to support real journalism.
    • The line between amateurs and professional journalists is blurred and it is likely the public largely doesn't care.
    • News is entertainment and needs to compete on the basis of what the audience wants—not what is good journalism or what should be covered.

    "Public relations professionals need to understand that these desperate days for traditional media are dangerous days for corporate and organizational reputations," says Bacon. "They need to be able to respond fast, to be aggressive in attacking misinformation and bad reporting and most importantly, they need to grab onto the incredible opportunities they have to talk directly to the people whose opinion about the organization matters most to their future. Talk quick, talk with complete honestly and talk directly."

    How does a web content strategy figure in all this?

    "Today's Internet tools including virtual communication centers, blogs, and communicator-controlled websites all make that possible. The desperate media environment makes it essential," advises Bacon.  And he is 100% correct..

    How do you do it?

    If you do not yet have a section of your website that can be controlled by the communication department this should be a priority.  The tools available today make this a no-brainer.

    RSS enable this section of the site, so that your content can be syndicated across the Net.  Feeds also allow you to reach subcribers fast...

    Use RSS feeds and other tools to monitor the blogs and conversations so you have your finger on the pulse and can pick up and respond to any comments or issues right away.



    Video Success Online Depends on Content Strategy
    Looking for viral online buzz? It's all about the content

    viral video you tube

    Andrew Foote of Peppercom has some sage advoce for firms looking to success with viral video and social media as part of their internet marketing strategy.:

    Content is king in this game. More often than not, the quality of viral content takes a backseat to the marketing mandate.

    Foote gives examples of how to get it right and how to get it very wrong. Dove's Evolution video was a winner, but their recent Super Bowl Commercial effort sank like a stone under a deluge of negative comments.

    The bottom line is that the message has to be exceptional, says Foote. I'd also add the importance of originality, authenticity and relevance. Don't force a viral marketing idea because it sounds cool—make sure it jives with the demographic you're trying to reach

    For some reason when we are faced with a new medium we tend to throw all the PR basics out with the bathwater.  Social media is very much like live communication - it's not a one-way, top down 'push' medium. You have to understand your sudience and deliver content that works for them. 

    Yes, it was much less threatening to deiver content in the 'old' ways - no-one was talking back.  Social media tools make it possible for your audience to give you instant feedback - they'll let you (and the rest of the world) know, in no uncertain terms, if you get it wrong.

    Here are Foote's tips for successul viral video online:

  • Don't force viral marketing concepts if they don't fit the brand essence.
  • Do your homework on what flies and what dies. Live the video sharing space.
  • Content is everything. Bring on producers who can push the buttons of buzz.
  • Take risks. Beware of corporate filters that will dilute the quality of the content.
  • Test it. If eight out of 10 people aren't cracking up, memorized or amazed, head back to the drawing board.
  • Cast a wide net. YouTube is center stage, but don't forget the other sites: Revver, iFilm, Myspace, etc.

    It's stll about content strategy and delivering the right message to the right audience, via the right channels.



  • Telcos Fail to Capitalize on Mobile Web 2.0
    Telecoms companies are failing to make the most of the growing popularity of the online information-sharing services of "Web 2.0", according to new research 'Web re-loaded: Driving convergence in the real world.' by global consultancy Arthur D. Little.

    This new report places users and user generated content in the spotlight yet again.  Yet it seems US Telcos have not yet got the Web 2.0 message.

    "In order to harness and monetize Web 2.0 the Telcos will have to rapidly address the needs of this community" says Martyn Roetter, Director of Arthur D. Little's US TIME. "Younger Europeans are already showing their readiness to interact on the move, with 38% of them accessing email from mobile devices, while Google launched Gmail for mobile in November last year. Telecommunications businesses now need to offer access to the established web 2.0 services, for both communication and for the fulfillment of their wider social needs while on the move."

    The dilemma Telcos face is whether they should build their own Web 2.0 platforms or engage with established sites such as flickr etc, says the report.

    One good example of collaboraiton is the Pontiac Underground site that partnered with Yahoo! and now offers access to all the Yahoo social media sites in one branded place.

    Whatever they do, they should do it soon. the race goes to the swift and The Cluetrain is not waiting for the laggers.

    .



    Twitter, twitter

    Looking for a fun widget to add to your site? I like the new site called “Twitter.”

    On Twitter, you quickly share just a little one liner about what you’re currently up to.� Then it notifies your close friends about what you’re up to.� It’s a nice way to feel connected to someone without feeling like you’re intruding.

    Susie has added a Twitter badge to this blog, but your twitter status also gets sent via AIM or GTalk, or can be see on twitter itself.

    It’s quick to sign up and fun.� Let me know if you join!



    Viral Marketing
    Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others... Published in HindustanTimes.com 13th S ..

    All About GPRS
    Dickens once said, \"never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart.\" Perhaps we can now say, \"never close your ..

    Generating Revenue Through Advertising

    Copywriting Makeover: Facts Vs. Fantasy (Part 1 of 2)


    Copywriting Makeover: Facts Vs. Fantasy (Part 1 of 2)
    If your copy doesn't speak to your customers in language they want to hear, your sales will suffer. The same message presented in different ways brings different responses. Follow one website as they take their copy from fact-oriented to romantic and dreamy with exceptional results.

    Podcast Recommendation
    I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I&#8217;ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy! Internet Business Mastery

    The Corporate Blogging Book
    Stop what you are doing and run out to your local Barnes and Noble bookstore. Why? Because you need to have in your hand at this very moment The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.

    Protected: Christmas Keywords Extracted from My Own Sites
    There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

    New Blog Coming
    I&#8217;ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn&#8217;t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can [...]

    Guerrilla Marketers' Cafe

    Free Book Promotion Site

    http://guerrilla.clarylopez.com

    Small Town Redneck Country Girl

    Small Town Redneck Country Girl
    There was a small town country girl who had a passion for making gifts and giving them to anyone who wanted them. She didn’t do it for the attention. She handed out the gifts in a private area, outside of the public eye. She did not give the gifts to hear words of thanks or [...]

    links for 2007-03-21
    Homepage Content Directory: My Favorite Photos Online "Save the URLs of your favorite images online into a Google Spreadsheet and view them through this gadget. Each worksheet creates a separate tab." (tags: Google Photography Widgets) Taking My Gmail Offline (tags:...

    The Risk of AdSense Revenue
    Generic advertisements such as Google AdSense absolutely do not belong on a professional business website. No matter how you look at it, it will not help improve your business and may very well have a devastating impact. Is it really worth the risk? Those people who have no clue what Google AdSense is, will likely become [...]

    Twitterholic
    You know you're addicted when you land on a list like this! Twitterholic is a fun resource and it has an RSS feed too. By the way, Twitter is very slow today. They need a five day outage and everyone...

    Expression Web Designer Beta
    I had been anxious to check out Microsoft’s new Expression Web Designer, not because I had any issues with FrontPage 2003, but because I like playing with new programs. I was thrilled when I received the download notice for the initial private beta, which they have since offered to the general public. I am probably not [...]

    Keeping Group Email Straight
    People often ask me is how I go about keeping group email straight. The truth is that I really do organize email using the same methods that I teach the members of my online groups and classes to use. By setting rules to make sure that every email goes straight to the folder it belongs in, [...]

    links for 2007-03-22
    David Finch: Developing the Work Ethic to be Effective in This New Media Space "A few thoughts on developing the work ethic to become the voice you are intended to be." (tags: leadership workethic Blogs) World gets 21st Century totem...

    Using Testimonials Effectively
    People seem to have a need to know what others think before they place an order for a product or service. They tend to ask everyone they know, both offline and in forums. They will often even research the net for reviews and testimonials. Unfortunately, testimonial letters have gotten a bad rap because of all [...]

    Best Web Development Tips
    One of the best teachers that any of us can have is the voice of experience. Over the years, the tips that I have learned from others has been invaluable to me. When it comes to learning web development skills, the little bits of information we pick up here and there can make all the [...]

    Tips for Buying a New Computer
    If I would have only known then, what I know now. How many times have we all said something like this when our computer is giving us trouble, or just isn’t designed to do what we want it to do? Making mistakes when we are learning to run an online business are inevitable and a normal [...]

    Find New Friends with Twittermap
    if you're not reading Mike Pegg's blog on Google Maps, you should. Today he found a gem. It's a mashup site called Twittermap that plots Twitter updates on a Google Map. If you're on Twitter simply use the l: command...

    Throwing In The Towel
    I believe that the number one way to find financial success is to first find what you love doing, and then find a way to get paid for doing it. I see people that spend weeks asking everyone they talk to for online business opportunities that they can make money at. It never crosses their [...]

    Live Twitter Search Engine Opens
    From David Troy, the fine gentleman who brought you Twitter Maps, comes Twitter Search. It's a simple live search engine that pulls up results by time, as opposed to the archival one I created earlier. There are no feeds yet...

    links for 2007-03-19
    The A-List dirty little secret | WinExtra Steven Hodson calculates that advertisers "own" most of the top 100 blogs. (tags: Blogs Advertising) Weather Channel Gadget Slick widget/gadget from The Weather Channel that provides local weather forecasts based upon city or...

    Make It Easy to Order Right Now!
    Why is it that online business owners spend countless hours following every possible search engine optimization and marketing technique to get me to visit their website, and yet make it so difficult for me to actually make a purchase? Haven’t they realized that if they don’t make it easy to order right now, the odds are [...]

    Know Your Target Audience
    Equally important with knowing your target audience is finding ways to let your target audience know you as a person. Many times when we run an online business, we forget the power of talking with our target audience. Handing people a business card in casual conversation is a common courtesy, but it is unlikely [...]

    An Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt
    I submitted a few questions via email for a group interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt that was conducted by two Stanford students. You can listen to interview or download the audio on their site. In the interview, Schmidt said...

    AJAX: The Giant Page View Killer
    Today I spoke at the AJAXworld conference and expo in New York. Internetnews.com has an in-depth write-up of my speech. During the prezo, I gave the page view three years to live. Further, I discuss why it's wise these days...

    Wednesday, March 21, 2007

    Interview Requests For March 21st


    Interview Requests For March 21st


    Copywriting Makeover: Facts Vs. Fantasy (Part 2 of 2)
    If your copy doesn't speak to your customers in language they want to hear, your sales will suffer. The same message presented in different ways brings different responses. Follow one website as they take their copy from fact-oriented to romantic and dreamy with exceptional results.

    Paying Markets And Freelance Jobs For March 21st
    B>PAYING MARKETS These are NOT recycled guidelines. WritersWeekly.com only features original market listings, received from and approved by the editors at each publication. Cy-Fair Magazine CURRENT NEEDS: "Local stories and resource guides, inspirational people stories; anything of interest pertaining to Cy-Fair Texas. Content is upbeat and family friendly." Pays "$100 for features (800-900-words), $50 for spotlight pieces ($300-500 words) $25 for Resource Guides such as listings and such." The Dollar Stretcher CURRENT NEEDS: "All manner of time and money saving articles." Pays $0.10/word for 500-750 words. Submit complete ms by email to gary@stretcher.com marked "hardcopy submission". ECT News Network CURRENT NEEDS: "Feature articles on IT and e-commerce topics, especially pieces that focus on Mac and Linux topics." Pays $70-$90 for articles of 800+ words. Education.com CURRENT NEEDS: "The site is comprised of short, news-driven items of interest to parents. Some of our needs include: The Daily Buzz: A provocative topic that gets reader's immediate attention. 200-300 words. (Previous examples: 'Dare to Skip Candy This Halloween', 'Is Autism on the Rise?', '8 Snacks That Won't Make You Guilty', 'Can Bowling Get Your Kid Into College?'). Features: Longer articles with more depth. 500-600 words. Pays $.50 per word for features. Columns pay a flat fee of $70-$100 each, depending on experience. Fine Art Registry / FineArtRegistry.com CURRENT NEEDS: Currently we have a need for knowledgeable, experienced writers with a solid, qualified background in the following industries: 1. Topics related to fine art and valuables; 2. Accredited Fine Art, Antique, and Collectible Appraisers; 3. Recognized Fine Art Experts; 4. Rare Book and Manuscript Professionals; 5. Industry Marketing Professionals that can submit realistic and practical advice for our members to help them better learn how to market themselves and their work; 6. Law Enforcement professionals with experience in the art theft arena; 7. Lawyers or legal professionals qualified to write articles that focus on artist copyrights and key legal issues affecting the fine art industry. We are also accepting submissions for Nonfiction: Expos , general interest, humor, interview/profile, opinion, personal experience, and photo features. Query with a unique idea. Pays $50-$1500 for assigned articles; $25-$150 for unsolicited articles; $50 for reprints. Articles average 200-3000 words. Ft. Myers & Southwest Florida magazine CURRENT NEEDS: "Very interested in health & fitness, travel & recreation and house & garden articles " Pays approx. $0.10/word for 500-1500 words.