Archive for the ‘marketing’ Category
Thursday · Popularity: 28% · twitter
With all the hype surrounding Twitter I had to give it a go a few months ago. The big question for me at the time was, is Twitter a useful tool or another avenue that eats time on the Internet?
I am not sure that question has really been answered in my mind yet, but I have made some observations over its use the last month, and if nothing else at all it has connected me to some people in business and blogging that I wouldn’t have known otherwise. At this point, I only wish more of my existing friends were using Twitter.
So Does Twitter Have Usefulness
What caught my eye and got me using Twitter was all the blog posts about its usefulness in business applications, and of course blogging. A few good posts I came across are:
Since most of these posts go into how Twitter functions I won’t try to repeat that here, but I have found a few good applications for its use. Blogging is all about networking of sorts, and Twitter is a social networking agent, so put the two together with a Wordpress Twitter Tools Plugin and you have a great match.
Twitter Tools Plugin & Twhirl
This is a great plugin (and another great one by Alex King, whom I am starting to think is the king of Wordpress plugins) that will automatically post a tweet when you post a new blog article. It is simple to use, and is loaded with options. This is the area on my sidebar that says “What I’m doing…” and it updates with blog posts and also @replies and regular tweet posts.
Then there is Twhirl. This is a standalone program that runs on Adobe’s Air platform that will allow you to use Twitter similar to an IM window on your desktop. They also just came out with a new version, info is on their blog at twhirl 0.8 released - adding friendfeed support. This and support through iPhone and other mobile devises make using Twitter easy.
Interacting is Networking
I found out that you really don’t want to call an automatic blog post entry the end of your Twitter use though. This is not quite the best etiquette to be used on Twitter. Like most things. To make them truly useful you really need to use and interact with them.
This is the case on Twitter as well. I learned how to use the @replies and general updates through a fellow user on Twitter and it expanded it use and productivity, at least as far as traffic goes, ten fold. I would highly recommend using Twitter for more than just blog post entries.
What has your experience been with Twitter? Do you find it a useful tool to use in business applications?
If you are so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/islandzephyr
Tuesday · Popularity: 43% · affiliate, ebay, news
Today eBay announced the official opening of the eBay Partner Network (or EPN) which, in 30 days no less, will replace Commission Junction as the sole affiliate program for eBay.
For those casual users of the eBay affiliate program, the email this morning might come as a bit of a surprise but they have been working on this for some time, and promise to have a better reporting and functionality, although I have been very happy with Commission Junction for many years now.
The news didn’t go unnoticed by those in the blogging world where you could find several posts this morning like eBay Partner Network now live by Sue from Tamebay, eBay Dumps Commission Junction from Net Profits, a good discussion from Shoemoney in eBay Affiliate Program FINALLY Drops the CJ Dead Weight, and several others. For those working with the eBay affiliate program in one way or another, this is big news.
What is an Affiliate?
If you are unfamiliar with how affiliates work, it is a simple concept that has been around for quite some time. A company offers an affiliate partner (the user) an incentive of some kind, usually money, to promote their company. At this point almost all companies do this in one form or another, and even small ecommerce sites can setup affiliates for their customer. I am both an affiliate partner and an affiliate provider through one of our small ecommerce sites.
You can even see this on non-eccommerce site and large B&M companies. DirectTV has offered $50 to anyone who gets a friend to sign up for a new satellite TV account for a long time, this is just a simple affiliate offering that can be done by anyone who has a friend who needs their service.
How Much Does an Affiliate Pay?
This is always the question. How much can I actually make using something like this. The answer is just about as much as you are willing to put into building your affiliate network. For most of us, we don’t have a 40 hour work week we can devote to an affiliate program, so we use it where we can, when we can.
I have posted my most recent report below, so you can see it isn’t much. We current run about $100 a month on the eBay affiliate program but it doesn’t take much effort to produce results like that below. We have made as much as $500-$600 a month and as little as nothing. It all depends on how much work you want to put into the program.
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Friday · Popularity: 11% · brand, marketing
How much have you worked on the branding of your intellectual or product information? So you have created a website, product, or a small business but you don’t have an identity yet?
There are many ways a customer will remember a small business. Good customer service, quality products, and reasonable or competitive prices are all practices that will make your business stand out and succeed.
One that is often overlooked by small business owners is the importance to building company recognition, or branding.
It could possibly be just as important to build a strong brand name as a small business as it is among the large corporations. You are smaller and harder to see, harder for your customers to remember. We can all remember who The Home Depot is without seeing a giant orange square logo but what person spending about 60-90 seconds on a page is going to remember what company that was a week from now. One way is to develop a strong brand name.
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Wednesday · Popularity: 15% · adsense, monetize, news
Snap Shot announced that they are entering the monetize your site advertising program with Snap Shares. Much like other affiliate programs Snap Shot now has the option to include four different types of ads, and of course Google Adsense is one of those methods.
Snap Shares adds a new money-making dimension to Snap Shots by allowing Web site owners and bloggers to increase their inventory with context-based ads at the bottom of each Snap Shot.
New Way To Monetize Your Blog
For those monetize your blog folks out there, this might be something to look into if you haven’t used their service before. It works similar to those textual links where an ad pops up from some keyword from within your post.
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Thursday · Popularity: 12% · domain, godaddy
Do you want to make some money with your idle domains while you wait to develop the site into a huge success? Cash Parking is one way to monetize your portfolio of domains.
GoDaddy Cash Parking is one place to put your domain portfolio, but the real question is, is it going to be a good return on your investment (that would be the $3.00 a month you have to pay for the service) in the long run? If you are wondering how much cash you can make with the GoDaddy Cash Parking service, let me give you my $.12 below, literally.
I love the graphic and stats GoDaddy uses to show how much cash you can make with your GoDaddy Cash Parking account over the other un-named options available. If you have 100 domains, and you get 45,000 impressions, that makes for 6,750 click through’s, with an average CPC (cost per click) of $.12, that gives you $7.92 per domain, or $792.16, and this is per month.
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