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Marketing & Sales

New York Startup Interviews By nextNYers

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 12, 2007

[photopress:nextnyers_1.jpg,full,alignleft]We watch so many interviews of tech startups from Silicon Valley and CA. Finally, there’s a site for New Yorkers which will only interview New York Tech Startups, and it is called nextNYers. Being an entrepreneur living in NYC, this makes me happy.

About nextNYers
The hottest up-and-coming technology, new media and Web 2.0 companies are profiled on nextNYers: the new weekly web series that tells you which companies in the New York City area should be on your radar through interviews with their top executives.The profiles offer insight into their vision and industry, their competitive landscape and their unique abilities.

First Episode of Magnify.net CEO and Founder Steve Rosenbaum

nextNYers is in partnership with NY-based tech blog CenterNetworks, which will post each week’s show.

I will be watching the episodes at nextNYers each week, and will write about some of the companies. Time to support local tech companies.

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Adwords Quality Score or Personal Credit History?

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 10, 2007

A good credit history always helps in life. When you buy a house, you get better mortgage rates, you want to get a lease for the new BMW, first they will check your credit history. Google started caring about the age of the sites for some time now, as we all know. Google thinks the websites are like good wine. When it gets older, it gets better. Now, the same thing is happening with Google Adwords Quality Score.

Amit from SuperAffiliateMindset had a post yesterday about the affect of the age of your Adwords account to the quality scores you will get for your campaigns. I have figured this out by myself almost a month ago. I was trying a new campaign with a brand new account, and all the quality scores became Poor, and OK after a few hours. When I have paused the campaign and started the same one at my old adwords account, all QS’s went to GREAT right away, and stayed there.

The important question is:

Is the age of your Google Adwords Account only criteria to get great QS?

It’s just like personal credit history, older the better. Let’s compare 2 person’s credit histories. Both have the same credit card for 10 years, but first person pays it all every month before the due date, and the second one is always late on payments, goes over his limit. Who will get a better credit history?

Therefore, there are many factors considered when assigning quality scores for your campaigns. Basically, Google assigns a credit history score for your adwords account. Here are a few factors that I strongly believe are used to determine the quality of a Google Adwords Account:

  • Age of the account.
  • Your average monthly spending.
  • Your average CTR’s (Click Through Rates)
  • Number of inactive keywords accountwide
  • Number of unapproved ads

For brand new accounts, I don’t believe you will be penalized for a long time before getting great QS’s. It doesn’t make sense to scare new advertisers businesswise.

So, if you want to try/test new campaigns I’d highly recommend using a test account instead of your main account. It might hurt your Google Adwords overall QS’s, and increase your overall cost.

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I was at Ad Tech NY Today

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 6, 2007

[photopress:adtech_ny.jpg,full,alignleft]I spent the afternoon visiting Ad Tech NY today. It was overwhelming with so many company booths to visit. I didn’t know there were these many advertising companies in the market.

My goal for this visit was to do some networking, check out the software providers for PPC management softwares, and meet affiliate marketing managers.

Most of the PPC Management softwares were for SEM Companies, but I have found a solution called Search Force which also targets advertisers like myself who manages PPC Campaigns for multiple websites. They were kind enough to do a detailed demo for me. I’m seriously considering this software now.

I have also met the CEO of a company called Hyper Bidder which has a unique ad concept. Basically, it’s an auction ad network where you bid for CPM by choosing specific sites for your campaigns, and your bid gets you the exposure. They have a patent pending technology and their slogan is; “The higher the bid, the more frequent the ad is served.” I’m definitely planning to give them a try.

Even though we are in the industry and we try to follow everything online, sometimes you need to meet the people face to face, and exchange business cards. You will definitely get some new updates from the industry by directly speaking to the company owners, and reps.

Here are the highlights of the Ad Tech NY for me;

  • Video, and mobile advertising is becoming huge. There were so many new companies presenting.
  • All PPC Management Software Providers use Trellian (The company behind KeywordDiscovery.com) for the keyword data. I have tried Wordtracker, and Wordze. Now it’s time for me to try KeywordDiscovery.
  • I did some partnership connections with some email marketing companies which was worth the time I’ve spent.
  • A few companies weren’t interested in providing me any info about their products when they’ve figured out I’m not the guy with million dollars a month ad budget. This is something I never get. You pay high rent for these types of shows, and you don’t even want to sell your products?
  • I have spoken with some affiliate networks and it was very helpful to decide my future affiliate partnerships. Affiliate companies are the friendliest.

Overall, it was a pretty good experience, and networking for me. If you want to improve yourself and your business, you need to attend the industry related events and shows. You might be surprised how much these events might help.

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Successful Email Marketing Case Study

by Ahmet Kirtok on November 1, 2007

[photopress:email_marketing.gif,full,alignleft]I have recently had a successful email marketing campaign for one of my ecommerce sites. I will share the story of this email marketing campaign as a case study.

The site we have launched the email marketing campaign is an ecommerce site which is 14 months old. We have never done email newsletter or any type of email marketing for this site due to very busy schedule. We had around 14,000 email adresses collected from our customers. So, I thought it was time to start our regular newsletters, and increase our returning customer rates by offering specials through email marketing.

After an extensive research, we had 3 choices of hosted email newsletter programs on the table, and we have decided to go with Aweber. (Read my Aweber Review). Aweber had all the features we needed, plus some extra features such as a great autoresponder system integrated. After we’ve signed up with Aweber, the only down side seemed as the verified opt-in requirement. Yes, our only choice was to have a verified opt-in email list. We couldn’t just email our list of previous customers. We had to send them an email asking if they wanted to be added to our newsletter.

* What is verified opt-in?

Frequently called confirmed opt-in or double opt-in, it is generally defined as sending an email to a new subscriber request to verify that they are the person who made the request before adding them to a mailing list. This is usually accomplished by means of an email message sent to the subscriber to which they must reply, or containing a URL which they must visit, in order to complete the subscription. This prevents others from accidentally or maliciously adding an email address to a mailing list that does not belong to them.

After sending 14,000 emails to our previous customers, only 750 of them opted in the newsletter. I was first shocked and very disappointed with the low return rate. After speaking with a few friends in email marketing field, they have encouraged me with the success rate. Even though we had only 750 people on the list, they were all previous customers, and also were very interested in receiving emails from us. Because we have asked their permission for it.

It has been little less than 24 hours since we’ve sent the newsletter, and I believe we have already great success. Here are the facts:

  • Only 6 emails were undeliverable
  • 79% open rate (79% of the people who have received the newsletter have opened it)
  • Almost 80% of the people who have read the email have clicked a link within the email.
  • Already had 20 orders with over $2000 revenue.

We had a very simple design with a short text. We had the company logo, 1 coupon code, 1 short paragraph thank you letter for being a customer, and 3 new product images/links. Short and simple, to the point.
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Make Money with Facebook Applications

by Ahmet Kirtok on October 28, 2007

“Update, November 23rd, 2009 – Facebook Advertising Platform is a great place to advertise your Facebook Applications. I have written a detailed article about Making Money with Facebook Ads. You might want to check it out also.”

Facebook is in our daily life. Most of my friends login to their facebook account more than their email accounts. I have been receiving tens of application invitations every day, and getting seriously tired of it. I was wondering about different monetization methods for Facebook applications and did some research.

I have found an online auction marketplace site to buy and sell Facebook Applications called APPMRKT. Even though this site is very new, there are already auctions running and people are paying some serious money for facebook applications.

Currently, most of the applications on facebook don’t make money, but a few of them have already started making money and bringing investors. There are 2 videos of Jason Bailey about monetizing facebook applications. I’m sure these will give you some ideas about the possibilities.

Monetizing Facebook Applications – Jason Bailey (part 1)
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Affiliate Marketing too Good to Be True?

by Ahmet Kirtok on October 27, 2007

I am a pretty new affiliate marketer. If you read my previous post about affiliate marketing, you will see the path I have taken until now.

I have tried only a few affiliate offers within last couple of months. By creating one niche site and two adwords campaigns, I have started making around $200/day net profit. I have signed up with AzoogleAds.com, one of the most respected affiliate marketing company, and searched for the offers they had. After picking the offer I wanted to promote, it took me total of 2 hours to create the site, and setup the adwords campaigns. Then, the offer was pulled from search traffic. Suddenly my income is net $0/day. But it didn’t discouarge me at all.

If I can create a very small site for a specific affiliate offer, spend total of 2 hours on it, and make around $200/day net profit, I must take this more seriously. This is what I am doing right now. Instead of creating a site for one offer, I have decided to pick an industry, and later create multiple affiliate offers, and landing pages on the site.

Long term or short term strategy for affiliate marketing?

You can create a very small site for a specific affiliate offer, and try to make the most buck out of it. This is the short term strategy, and works great for many affiliate marketers. But if you create a solid site, invest into the site, and start launching multiple affiliate offers in that niche, you will have a stable business model. This is the path I’m planning to take. I know the cash won’t be pouring in for the short term. But if I have a cool site with organic traffic, and regular members, then I will have a long term business in hand. I won’t have to worry about Google Slaps, or any related affiliate marketers’ nightmares.

Time is the problem for affiliate marketers

Yes, time is very valuable. I already run my businesses, and overwhelmed with the daily tasks. I can have my designer design a great new site, I can arrange the time to program the backend. But how will the people start coming? Will PPC enough, isn’t my goal to brign organic traffic? Now, this is the tricky part. I will use the big power of web 2.0 (user generated content). This is one of the important rules of money making; let others work for you. If I can find the right idea and right industry to create a web2.0 site, start the buzz, and let the community create the content, then I can focus on monetizing the site. This is what I will do with my next affiliate project.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?

by Ahmet Kirtok on September 3, 2007

[photopress:affiliate_marketing_success.jpg,full,alignleft]I first met an affiliate marketer at the summer of 1991. I didn’t know he was an affiliate marketer. We were on vacation on the Mediterranean Coast of Turkey in a small town. This town had beautiful architecture along with great sun, and the beaches. On the narrow street where all restaurants and bars stayed, there was this guy who stood all day. He was asking the tourists if they needed free recommendations and more information about the restaurants, bars and their menus.

It is always hard to pick the right restaurant or bar when you are on vacation, because you don’t know the area, there are great local places which tourists are not aware of. Anyway, this guy has offered to take you to the real deal places where locals hang out. He’s spoken almost perfect English, making jokes on the way, explaining every detail about the restaurants he’ll take you. He’s made a deal with several restaurants and bars in the town.
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Turning a WordPress Blog into a CMS

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 24, 2007

[photopress:wordpress_cms.png,full,alignleft]For one of my ecommerce sites I needed a very simple CMS. I always use WordPress for my blogs, and love it, but I wanted to have a more CMS than a blog. After spending a few minutes, I have turned the wordpress blog into a CMS. I’m pretty sure this has been done millions of time before, but I wanted to share it, because I know it will help somebody who’s looking for a similar solution.

Step by Step Guide to Turn a WordPress Blog Into a CMS
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Understanding NET ROI for Google Adwords

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 23, 2007

[photopress:ROI.jpg,full,alignleft]Google Adwords has become a MUST not for only online marketers, also for many small business owners. Competition increases every day within advertisers. Especially with the direction Google is taking to become the monopoly in advertising industry, you need to become an advanced user of Adwords to be able to make money. I have been reading many articles, and blog posts about Google Adwords ROI. Most of these resources offer tips and tactics to increase your ROI for Google Adwords campaigns.
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YouTube Social Marketing Experiment

by Ahmet Kirtok on August 22, 2007

[photopress:youtube_logo.gif,full,alignleft]Have you ever tried bringing traffic from YouTube? I have tried uploading a few videos before, but never had the chance to test the actual traffic coming from YouTube.

Social marketing is becoming huge. There are many popular websites like YouTube, StumpleUpon, MySpace, etc. If you have direct links from a site, you can easily track the traffic you’re receiving, and even every single detail from the traffic.

But with the addition of online video websites, most users will upload a video and implement their website URL onto the video, such as “Brought to you by blahblah.com” caption text on the video. This is great, if the person who is watching the video likes it, he/she may be checking your website also for more. But since the URL on the video is not clickable, they will type the URL and visit your site. Statistics softwares will show these visitors as “Direct Traffic” and you will never know where they came from.
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