Posts Tagged ‘online marketing’

Oh shit it’s May. That means there’s probably some interesting news that happened since the last wrap-up post. I started this post a few days ago… finishing it up on a Monday, which is rather difficult because blogs keep updating with new posts.

In “This Makes Me Feel Old News,” Wolfenstien turns 20. Some of you were barely a glint in your father’s nutsack when that game came out.

Online and Affiliate Marketing News

Some of the biggest non-news last month and this month, has been the recent updates to the Google algorithm. SEO is dead and Google killed some pandas or something. I don’t know, I don’t follow this shit. Although I used to care back in the day, the idea of building your whole ‘business model’ around trying to outsmart Google with spam and crap is no longer appealing, and it’s no longer a viable business model. Shoemoney has a laugh at these fools in this post. You can also get more LOLz by visiting the WickedFire forum SEO section, where countless retards are complaining that their entire livelihood vanished into thin air.

The bottom line is that you’re going to have to get off your ass and build an actual, long-term business. This is nothing new. Even if it’s SEO, the days of spamming your way to the top are gone (unless they’re not gone, in which case you’re probably smart enough to not spill the beans), so commit your time to something that isn’t dependent on Google. Something worth sharing so you can actually take advantage of all that social media goodness, so people drive your traffic and not a search engine.

Now read this massive shit of a post from ViperChill. It’s huge. It set a world record for the longest blog post in recorded history. There is a lot of good information there. A LOT.

Aaron Wall of SEOBook takes a look at the penguin update too. This is one guy who’s opinion on the subject you want to read. Also, on Negative SEO and outing.

And if you’re wondering, here are the “official” changes to improve Google’s Search quality the past few weeks.

When you’re done with that, Microsite Masters has a huge write up on what to do about that Penguin update. SEO is dead. Long live SEO.

To add insult to injury, Google is now putting some value into something called AuthorRank. Finch takes a look at what it means for affiliates. If you do decide to come out of hiding and author something, KissMetrics shows you how to really take advantage of Authorship markup. 150% increase in CTR you say? Better hit the portrait studio.

Fuck it. Let’s just fire Matt Cutts. The celebrity has gone to his head.

Back to the non-SEO news…

Plenty of Fish getting sued for someone using an image they weren’t supposed to in a true.com ad. Ben links to a legitimate case study that looks at the CPM vs Volume relationship on pof ads. Also some more pof advertising stats.

This concludes our PlentyofFish news for the day.

MIT nerd builds a $10 Million “Sugar Daddy” empire from BusinessInsider.com. Compete Blog investigates where people are looking for love online. In other trend news, people are trying to get that body ready for the beach.

What is affiliate marketing? This infographic from Pepperjam explains in a racist way. Andy runs a Hate Store. He sells cross burning materials and KKK masks. Not an affiliate program I want to be a part of!

Yahoo explains how to market effectively to African American consumers with a link to a new AdAge report.

Decent post from DirectResponse on monopolizing a vertical. Apparently, you’re going to need a lot of indians.

Finch drops on knowledge – Read this and improve your conversion rates. Some solid (but known) tips on improving conversions for brands.

Negbox writes a post about a video talking about bounded rationality… whatever that is. KissMetrics analyzes some “power words” ( imagine, you, because … not so powerful out of context.) Uber Affiliate comes out of hibernation and writes Researching Affiliate Niches in 2012.

What’s the state of online marketing in 2012? This infographic bears all!

Yo Dawg I heard you like infographics so here’s the Top 6 Infographics of the Week from econsultancy. And other about mobile email stats.

Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland on human behavior and innovation.

ConversionXL takes a look at what to call your call-to-action button. Also, ridiculously effective techniques for offline lead generation. And if you’re on twitter – here are 30 conversion rate experts you can follow.

Prelaunch tricks to boost your ad revenue. A slide deck on How to convert free users in to paid users.

Ask yourself, Do questions work in headlines? What about 1 word copywriting?

How to track Youtube plays as conversions from hasOffers. Google wants people to use Adwords to push video: How every business can play big on Youtube.

Another interesting read from hasOffers – How to make an affiliate marketing calendar.

Some Facebook-ness

FBAdsLab looks at common landing page mistakes with Facebook. Also a short post on a winning CTR ad in Facebook. Mashable has a good writeup on how to drive engagement within Facebook ads.

Facebook merges the “publish_stream” with “publish_action”. Relevant if you’re messing around with the Open Graph.

Check out how Weather.com is integrating Open Graph. Notice the “Love” and “Ugh!” buttons on the left? Just another unique implementation of the Open Graph to get those gears turning.

Why moms are a hot market on a Facebook. MILC = Mom I’d Like to Convert.

IMGrind has this good writeup on How to Dominate Facebook Ads. Also, have you noticed “Trending Articles” showing up in your Facebook feed? InsideFacebook explains those Trending Articles. It looks like Facebook is doing everything it can to load the news feed with commercial intent, rather than a stream of musings from your friends.

And now back to online marketing…

Getting 80,000 some clicks to a blog post with a bunch of twitter tools.

Interesting tidbits from Certified Knowledge about Google’s new Near Match settings. Blackhat PPC also has an opinion on the “near match” change.

Really good write-up on the free analytics tools out there, by KissMetrics. Market research 101. Know them and use them daily.

A thorough guide on how to do trademarked bidding in Adwords. From PPCHero – How does Adwords assign a Quality Score even before a campaign is live?

An hour of your time well spent: Best Practices from 30,000 A/B and multivariate split tests.

Good data from Royal Pingdom: No US City is in the top 50 worldwide when it comes to internet. No shit, when you have monopolies like Comcast. I fucking hate you Comcast. Rot in a fire. [ this rant removed for another blog post ]

Speaking of monopolies, mobile carriers are killing it by overselling data plans.

Also, how does that $1 Billion buyout of Pinterest stack up to other asinine buyouts? It looks like Mark Cuban is still the king. Props for getting filthy rich before that tech bubble burst.

JP Morgan buys a 7% stake in the toolbar company Conduit. Got eight figures chillin in JP Morgan Chase…

And finally, Ad:Tech gets some harsh words from Hitler. “I thought RTB was the future!!!” “Mein Fuher….”

Mobile Web and Apps

Mobile affiliate tracking sucks for many merchants. High-end devices like Android and iThings are cookie-capable, but if the merchant’s website sucks on a device it will kill conversions.

Some mobile facts and stats from 2011 in infographic form. A collection of links about the future of mobile from BD Conference.

IMGrind takes a look at the sad state of Mobile App development. Those are some seriously depressing stats. In my experience, if you’re going to spend time building an app, you better make it good. Make it unique. Make it useful. It’s a huge time investment, so if you’re going to do it, go balls-to-the-wall and build something that actually provides value. Especially true since you’re competing against established companies.

Good notes regarding WiFi usage. iPad users stay connected. More fun data: Emerging mobile markets worldwide. Also, an infographic called How Mobile Customers are different.

An infographic on the mobile apps economy. An infographic of Android developers.

Can you build the next Instagram? 4 Hour Work Week thinks its possible. Although, its not all fun and games. The popularity of Draw Something has been dropping since Zynga bought out OMGPOP.

So if you wanted to do that … If you need a mobile developer here is a giant list of mobile developers from all countries. If you have an app, here is a good readup on how to promote Android and iOS apps. Some overlap here, but even more mobile app promotion networks and agencies. This article explains how to do ASO, the new SEO?, aka App Store Optimization. All very handy tips.

Sure why not… one more article with tips on iOS store optimization.

Google just made it a whole lot easier to advertise mobile apps. Good news!

Removing stumbling blocks in mobile forms. Some Smashing stuff on gamification and user experience. Also, Gamification, Rewards and Dopamine marketing.

Randomness on Productivity, Design, Startups, and the Nerdy

Great read: Going from $0 to $500,000 in recurring revenue in a year with no VC money. And if you’re running a start-up, or starting a start up, you should check out this tumblr page for start-ups.

On a serious note, 10 Rules for Web Startups.

(1) Simple trick to increasing productivity. And by productivity, they mean avoiding wasting time on shit that doesn’t make $$.

Asian Efficiency has a surprisingly long writeup on pornography, masturbation, and productivity. Read it, it’s interesting. The whole series on Sex and Productivity is interesting. Goodbye, myfreecams :(

Also, a good article on Don’t Break the Chain (You know, that Jerry Sienfeld productivity tip.) This is one productivity tip I really want to implement.

Tongue-in-cheek article on How to Murder Your Productivity. Stop doing these things. NOW!

Also, Getting Things Done for hackers e-book. And How to Meditate daily. Another ritual I plan on getting into.

FreelanceSwitch does a bit on Dealing with procrastination. That morning alertness one is key. Be productive. You can also check out My Head in the Morning, a look at how that gray matter in your head functions after you wake up.

That socialist pig Obama is trying to redistribute the wealth to people who could potentially make good use of it. Why we don’t need anti-trust laws and how they actually cause monopolies.

James Altucher writes “How I Lost 100 Pounds”

Your idea is stupid. Execution is all that matters.

Removing complexity when coding is the key to being a good programmer. When you think something through before writing, instead of just typing away -> run code to see if it works, you tend to write better code. This isn’t something that you can pick up overnight, and its definitely something i have to work on all the time, but its hugely helpful to even be aware of the problem.

If you do anything related to websites, these cheat sheets could come in handy. Digging into WordPress looks at how to use Apache Bench to measure latency. Also, another way to speed up your site is with DNS pre-fetching. Useful if your media is stored on another domain or you’re sourcing files from a CDN (like Google’s jQuery CDN.) I did not know about this.

And finally, a ton of good HTML5 / CSS3 articles.

That’s all for now. READ UP!