SEOMoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Learn the basics of what search engine optimization is and how it can lead to vast amounts of targeted traffic at ridiculously low prices. SEO is how online businesses drive organic traffic (non-paid) and will always be an important asset that a web property can build up. SEOMoz’s guide is an excellent, and thorough, resource that is by far the best introductory piece on everything SEO related.
Google’s AdWords Beginners Guide
Google AdWords is the industry standard in pay per click advertising platforms. What is PPC you ask? Ever notice the ads around the results on Google when you do a search for something commercial? Advertiser pay for visitors based on the number of clicks (creative name, eh?). Many businesses can produce awesome marketing ROI’s with pay per click advertising. This tutorial gives the basics of how to get rolling and how to start a campaign–straight from the horse’s mouth.
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According to Facebook, there are over 300 million active Facebook users. While over 50% of the users login to their Facebook account every single day, fastest growing demographic is 35 years old and older. (If you are interested in finding out more about Facebook’s demographics & stats, check out Facebook’s stats page.)
Whether you are a small business owner, an online marketer or the head of marketing at a giant corporation, if you are still not using Facebook to get new customers and business, you are making a huge mistake.
Facebook has an ad platform called Facebook Ads, and you can start advertising on Facebook Ads with as low as $1 a day. Yes, it is 1 buck a day.
At the end of this article, you will be able to launch your first Facebook Ads campaign and learn how to optimize Facebook Ads. If you have been running Facebook Ads, you will learn some advanced tips for Facebook Ads targeting and split testing which will end up lowering your ad spent tremendously for the same amount of clicks.
How to Make Money with Facebook Ads article is written for absolute beginners in mind, but I will also be sharing some pretty advanced, never shared Facebook Ads techniques. I will also reveal the secret tool used by the top Facebook marketers. Some of these top Facebook marketers are my friends, they won’t be happy at all when they see that I’m sharing their secret weapon; “
I’m sorry guys, please don’t get mad at me!“.
Okay… Enough said, let’s get started with the “How to Make Money with Facebook Ads” Guide.
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Is it possible to create a stable passive income stream with affiliate marketing?
Yes, absolutely.
Is it true that we can create an affiliate site within minutes and become a millionaire overnight, just like it says in $99.00 “Get Rich Overnight” ebooks?
Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Every penny, a real online marketer makes online, is the result of very hard work and many sleepless hours spent on the computer.
I have found a way to create a stable passive income stream with much less work than any online or affiliate marketing techniques.
I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I will share my biggest secret today which I have never shared before, not even with my close friends. I am a guy who believes in KARMA, so here it goes.
My true story of making over $5000/month passive income within 3 months as an ebay affiliate:
It was around August of 2007 when I have read a few forum posts about a software/script called BANS (Build a Niche Store). A few people were talking about how much they make with this script as an ebay affiliate.
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Local businesses usually don’t have large advertising budgets. Large franchising chains, and brand names usually use their national advertising channels to compete with local businesses.
Internet advertising is becoming more popular for both online businesses and local small offline businesses. There are some quality local business directories online. One of them I’ve found recently is Kudzu.
Kudzu.com is an Internet venture owned and operated by Cox Search Inc., a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, one of the nation’s leading media companies and providers of automotive services. So, it’s backed up with a well known brand.
Kudzu is running a special for a limited time. They are offering FREE Premium listing through 2008. I have registered my businesses last week, and already started receiving some quality traffic. I wanted to share this information with my readers since it’s a great value (normally it’d cost you around $750.00).
Click to visit to register your business for FREE (No credit card required, nothing to lose).
Here’s how your premium listing will look like at Kudzu.
Take advantage of this limited time offer and register your business for free. Every visitor helps for your business.
* Important Tip: You don’t have to own a local business to be able to register. One of my websites receives the most traffic from a niche local business directory site.
[photopress:online_sales.gif,full,alignleft]According to a recent Forrester Research report, online holiday retail sales in the U.S. are expected to hit $33 billion in 2007, a 21% increase over last year’s sales. Personally speaking, our online sales have already doubled this holiday season. Even though we have run a big discount through an email campaign, black friday was not our best sales day. For the holiday season our best day was yesterday (Cyber Monday).
Our prediction shows that our ecommerce business sales will increase around 50% for the month of december (compared to november), and we will try to keep the increase until June with different promotion techniques.
Included in Forrester’s report were the following findings:
Apparel and Accessories: This category will top holiday shopping lists.
(80% of respondents said that they will purchase something in this category online.)
Free Shipping: A majority of consumers still have interest in free shipping promotions.
(61% of respondents said they are more likely to shop online from a retailer offering free shipping.)
Less Flare: Fewer consumers are willing to pay for extras such as gift wrapping, or overnight delivery.
(26% of respondents said they would pay for expedited delivery prior to the holiday season, down from 45% who said they would do so in 2006.)
*Forrester defines the holiday shopping season as the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
ComScore, Inc. also released recent information and predictions regarding the 2007 holiday season. ComsScore, a global leader in measuring the digital world, projects that the months of November and December will see approximately $29.5 billion in online consumer spending.
2006 versus 2007
Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)
2006: Jan-Oct: $77.5 Billion
2007: Jan-Oct: $93.6 Billion
(21% Increase)
2006: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $24.6 Billion
2007: Nov-Dec (Holiday Season): $29.5 Billion
(Projected 20% Increase)
Their reports also show that the first eighteen days of the holiday season saw more than $7 billion in online retail spending.
Holiday Season to Date, 2006 versus 2007
Non-Travel (Retail) Spending (Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases)
2006: November 1-18, $6.01 Billion
2007: November 1-18, $7.04 Billion
(17% Increase)
“The online holiday shopping season got off to a slow start in the first week of November, but it has since picked up sharply,†notes comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Sales in the first ten days of November were up modestly versus year ago, but surged to levels in excess of 20 percent by mid-November. It’s likely that warmer than average weather at the beginning of November kept people outdoors and away from their computers, weighing down early holiday season sales, especially for key online categories like apparel. The growth rates during the second and third weeks of November are likely to be better indicators of how the remainder of the season will play out.â€
Many will sale most of the ecommerce niches are already saturated. DO NOT Believe them. There are so many ecommerce niches that needs new online stores desperately. Even some big names still don’t do a good job in online marketing. For me, an ecommerce business is like a long term investment. People will shop online more, and your ecommerce site will keep growing if you work hard on it.
Happy Holiday Sales!
[photopress:thepoint_logo.png,full,alignleft]The Point is a social and consumer activism site found by Chicago based Andrew Mason that just launched this week. I like the concept, and tested it myself by starting a campaign.
The concept is simple; A member creates a campaign, and participants pledge to take action only when enough other people have pledged to do the same thing. If the tipping point is reached, members agree to boycott a product, donate money to the cause, or take some form of civil action. You can review all the campaigns, and decide to participate or not.
If the site becomes popular, one of the main concerns might be the cencorship. I couldn’t find any information if ThePoint.com will use any cencorship towards any campaigns in the future or not. This part from the Terms & Conditions Page may give us some idea:
The Point may remove any Content and The Point accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all. To report Terms of Service abuse, please email: abuse@thepoint.com
TechCrunch points that ThePoint.com has already raised $2.5 million from angel investors, and will soon try to raise more in a VC round. I’m very curious about the monetization techniques they will use. I will definitely write a followup.
Andrew Mason, the founder of ThePoint.com, has posted this comment at TechCrunch after a question raised by a reader about the similarity of ThePoint.com to PledgeBank.com ;
Pledgebank is a great site and shares the same basic “I’ll do something, but only if others cooperate†model, but beyond that, there are more differences than similarities. First, The Point is largely focused on “do this, or else†campaigns — ultimatums targeted at a third party that are designed to, once they tip, quickly force a change by creating an unendurable financial stress. For many campaigns on The Point, the tipping point is something that can be quantified — it’s the point where the cost to a target of the group action becomes greater than the benefits of not changing. The tipping point of a campaign on The Point shouldn’t be determined by a prediction of how many people are likely to join, rather, a calculation of how many people are needed to force change. On The Point, it’s less important that a campaign tip than it is for people to have the sense that they will only be asked to take action when the conditions exist for a combined action to solve their shared problem. We also have an awesome feature called conditional anonymity — your identity isn’t revealed until the campaign tips — that makes The Point a singularly powerful tool for forming issue-specific workplace unions.
Overall, I like the idea and the site (usability, design, and concept is pretty good). I will definitely be checking the campaigns, and will participate.
Exponental growth rate of Facebook usage all over the world led many developers create applications for Facebook, and for other social sites. VC’s are also interested in good applications. While small businesses and online marketers already make money with Facebook Advertising, application developers are looking for ways to increase their earnings.
Main problem developers facing was the compatibility issue between social sites. If you have an application project for Facebook Platform, first you have to learn the Facebook Markup Language, but if you want to implement this application to another social site, you need to rewrite the code for the other site’s markup language. This process is very time consuming for developers.
To help the application developers, Google has launched OpenSocial this month.
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You have the great idea for a Web 2.0 Startup project. It might be the next Facebook. But you don’t have the experience to properly put a business plan, sales pitch for VC’s, or any development experience. You believe in your idea so much, you have the entrepreneur spirit, but no experience. What would you do?
[photopress:dp.jpg,full,alignleft]Duncan Riley from TechCrunch introduces us to the company which will answer your questions; Digital Telepathy. If you are an experienced entrepreneur in Web 2.0 field, you might not need a helping hand even though Digital Telepathy offers services for existing startups looking for advice on taking their business to the next level, but if you are new to all Web 2.0 thing, this might be a great choice for you.
Duncan Riley explains the 3 “Biz in a Box” Products which Digital Telepathy offers;
The concept is simple: Digital Telepathy offers three design my business options with varying service levels based on the length of each plan. The 15 day plan provides a wannabe startup with market research, strategic alignment, scalable revenue model, instruction manual for project completion and a concept summary delivered as a “Biz in a Boxâ€. The 45 day plan offers (in addition to the 15 day plan) “initial buzz building,†and a range of design services including basic prototyping, usability testing, blueprints, concept mapping and other design services. The 90 day plan adds development services including full scale back-end development for beta release, front end development, private beta invites, feature development and more.
Prices range from $15,000 through to $250,000. Each project has its unique needs, therefore you will need to contact them for a quota. Below is a comparison chart for Digital Telepathy’s services:
Check out the projects they have already done. Their work looks promising.
Update – November 23rd, 2009 I have written a detailed article about Facebook Ads. Please take a look at the Facebook Ads post if you like to learn more about Facebook Advertising.
Facebook had flyers ad networks called; Facebook Flyers Basic (CPM Flyers Ad Network within Facebook), and Facebook Flyers Pro (CPC Flyers Ad Network within Facebook). Many blogs, especially affiliate blogs had posts about these services such as “how to cheat the $50/day limit”, “affiliate link banning”, etc.
Facebook will be discontinuing the flyers services and started an ad service called Facebook Ads or Facebook Social Ads.
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Here’s the explanation of Facebook Social Ads from Facebook:
Facebook Social Ads
Social Ads leverage the power of Facebook News Feed by serving relevant stories about friends engaging with your business.
New Facebook Ads also has service called “Facebook Pages”. Basically you can create a Facebook page for a company, product, artist, etc. and promote it. Here’s an example of a Facebook Page. Creating a Facebook page is free, you pay to promote it.
Here’s the description of Facebook Pages from Facebook:
Establish an interactive presence on Facebook.
Every Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand. Users can express their support by adding themselves as a fan, writing on your Wall, uploading photos, and joining other fans in discussion groups. You can send updates to your fans regularly — or just with special news or offers. Add applications to your Page and engage your users with videos, reviews, flash content, and more. Creating a Facebook Page is easy, free, and great for all types of businesses.
If you are an affiliate marketer or online marketing professional, Facebook Ads might a great place to run highly targeted ad campaigns.
I’ll be creating a test campaign and blog about it with details and screenshots to help the beginners.
[photopress:startup_weekend.png,full,alignleft]Have you ever thought about starting a company within 1 weekend from concept to completion? Is it even possible?
If you try to do it yourself, it might be little hard, but a group of highly talented and motivated people might succeed. They are actually doing it.
Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating.
It is free to participate, and founders receive equal shares of founder stock of the company they create. 5% of each company created goes towards Startup Weekend.
It is so crazy, but I love the idea. I have no idea if these startups will live long, but who cares? It’s the idea of learning while you are doing it. You get to read so many case studies at school, at Startup Weekend, you will be in the case study. It never gets better than this.
Startup Weekend already got some national media coverage, and I’m sure will get much more.
Some of the news mentioning Startup Weekend:
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A picture from Atlanta Startup Weekend where Skribit.com was born.
Scheduled Future Weekends
- San Francisco (November 16-18)
- London (November 30- Dec 2)
- Dublin (December 7-9)
- Los Angeles (December 14-16)
If you live in one of these cities, and have a passion about entrepreneurship, you HAVE to attend the Startup Weekend in your city.
Big THUMBS UP for this brilliant idea ; Startup Weekend.
