Make Money Online

When the Federal Trade Commission’s new blogger disclosure rules went into effect on Dec. 1, bloggers were not just faced with ethical exposure, they were also faced with a Web design dilemma.

With the FTC wanting to know the relationships between the writers and the products they write about, the question becomes how and where bloggers should display the information on their sites.

Because of the archival nature of the Web, every post about any product is just a Google search away, so it’s unrealistic for the FTC to expect bloggers to go back and retroactively disclose relationships on past posts. Instead, most bloggers have decided on a separate page with a list of their relationships with businesses.

Chris Brogan, the well-known blogger and social media consultant, has done just that with brief mentions of his disclosures on his site’s About page. Read it here.

Included on that list are Brogan’s affiliate relationships as well as products he has received for review.

In contrast, author Tim Ferriss is much briefer on his disclosure page, linking out to a bio of his investments. Read it here.

After Dec. 1, other bloggers decided to weave their disclosures into individual blog entries and leave it at that. Implementation of the disclosures has been inconsistent and will be even more so as social media endorsements start to gain more and more focus. How do you disclose a positive Tweet in 140 characters or less?

Bloggers need to consider what works for them best. Having these disclosures on a FAQ page seems convenient but could also become out-of-sight, out-of-mind.  For the sticklers at the FTC, top-of-mind is what’s going to quickly become the name of the game.

The rest is here:
FTC Makes Bloggers Ponder How to Disclose

My friend Chris Brogan gave a presentation this week at LeWeb in Paris.

Here are some of his comments:

You live or die by your database. Don’t build Twitter or Facebook at the expense
of a database you own after they flavor of the year passes.

He asked 6 thought provoking questions:

1. How do we share? How do you share information? What does your business share? Social Networks don’t go anywhere if they’re a dead end street, a locked up environment.

2. How do we collaborate? Are you encouraging information to flow from your system.

3. How do we go from HOME (the Home page) to being Nomads. There are tremendous advantages to building many outposts (Facebook, Twitter, communities) “Build outposts and passports back to your home page.”

4.”How do we extend experiences from the physical world to the web, and back.” Foursquare is just scratching the surface. (and before that BriteKite and Dodgeball)

5.”How do we wire humanity deeply? There is a difference between the person on Twitter representing Southwest Airlines and the person at the counter.”

6. “How do we go from being a theater to being a theater in the round? 360 degrees. Does your website push information out, or does it start a collaboration and engage people? People are looking for a human face on a company.

Originally posted here:
6 Questions from my friend Chris Brogan at LeWeb in Paris

Books are a wonderful thing. With the variety of media available to us it is often easy to become oversaturated and forget to pick up a book. So to get your entrepreneurial spirit inspired and get you reading for the holidays, ReveNews is having our first annual book Giveaway.

From November 30th until December 19th, 2009 we will be giving away two books a day via the @ReveNews Twitter account.

Our picks for this holiday giveaway are:

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith (interview by ReveNews’ own CT Moore)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods by Shel Israel

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

Click here to view the embedded video.

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR by Brian Solis

Click here to view the embedded video.

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

Click here to view the embedded video.

Be the first to DM us on Twitter with the right answer to our trivia question, which will be about one of the authors, win the book of your choice from our five holiday picks.

See the rest here:
Get Inspired: ReveNews Book Giveaway

You’d think by now business owners would have figured out that social media is the next tidal wave on the Internet, and that they’d better get on the surfboard or get wiped out. Well, think again. SmartBrief on Social Media,  an e-mail newsletter that goes out to some 30,000 business readers, reports that nearly 85 percent of readers surveyed “have experienced resistance to social media as a business strategy.”

When asked “Where have you encountered the greatest resistance to social media in your organization?” the two leading responses were (not surprisingly) the president/business owner (21 percent) and senior management (20 percent). Of those readers that “successfully overcame resistance to using social media” at their place of business, more than half of them said they “just did it, and served as the role model themselves.”

Chris Brogan, author of the new best-selling book Trust Agents, suggests
it may require more than “just doing it,” however. He thinks it takes good arguments about improving the company’s communications and bottom line, not simply espousing the coolness of social media. He recommends sharing relevant case studies to prove that other businesses are getting legitimate results from using social media. It wouldn’t hurt to get a member of senior management to be a cheerleader, either.

“It’s just a matter of finding the right opportunity to recommend that your company is ready to play in the game,” Brogan says. “It might mean finding your top competitor already using the tools, but hey, that’s won several social media enthusiasts the chance to get things going.”

In an interview with SmartBrief on Social Media, marketing expert Valeria Maltoni, who writes the ConversationAgent blog, reinforces Brogan’s points, saying it’s crucial to “speak the language of business when describing social media” and “focus on the opportunities that exist in the marketplace.” The three most common mistakes Maltoni sees in pitching social media to senior management are not tying the strategy into business goals, lack of insight into where social media can be integrated into the company’s business strategy, and poor execution capabilities.

Maltoni says that entrepreneurs tend to immediately understand the benefits of social media: “They get it, they know they can use the tools to amplify their off-line activities and scale their own presence and participation in customer communities.” Large organizations, on the other hand, may be more resistant because they are “more siloed and less organic.”

The bottom line seems to be that for business leaders to embrace social media, they’ll need to hear a compelling business argument that includes some justification for ROI.

See more here:
Businesses Still Wary of Social Media

This is a clip of Loren Feldman and Chris Brogan talking shop at Affiliate Summit East. They make some interesting comments about how affiliate marketers differ from tech bloggers and social media types. Check it out…

Excerpted from:
Loren Feldman and Chris Brogan from Affiliate Summit East

In the last installment of Coffee with Nicky, our CEO Nicky Senyard discussed how affiliates could use twitter. Something that she focused on was how the channel itself should not tried to be monetized. Rather, affiliates should focus on using it to further grow and better engage their existing audiences.

Well, this is a clip of Chris Brogan discussing how any marketers should approach online communities in general, and his point is rather similar. Specifically, whether their affiliate marketers or corporate representatives, Chris underscores how communities are best used for building trust-based relationships, and by trying to just “sell to them,” marketers are very likely to end up shooting themselves in the foot. Enjoy…

Original post:

Todd Defren ran an informal poll and started a very intellectual thread in his blog called Nobody Cares About Newspapers. Some of my favorite bloggers including Chris Brogan, Richard Binhammer and CC Chapman contributed to the conversation.

Most of us care about newspapers. However the function they provide is slowly being broken apart and assumed by other mediums. Here’s a few of my thoughts about Newspapers and the Newspaper industry.

The internet has disintermediated (removed the middleman) for hundreds of industries or functions within businesses. Do you remember when you used to book flights through a travel agent? Or buy music at a record store?

Search engines (Google) and RSS feeds have disintermediated the delivery of news function of the newspapers. Every day a smaller portion of us read a paper newspaper and a huge portion get their news online or on our mobile device in a format we have customized for ourselves.

In his blog post, Defren mentions the pleasure of ‘taking his New York Times out to his deck’. The Amazon Kindle threatens to disintermediate the portability and readability of news. All that will be left for those of us over the age of 30 may be the nostalgic tactile feel of turning newspaper pages.

Chris Brogan highlighted the future of journalism in Twittering about Defren’s post. The remaining asset the newspapers own is Trust (although this is constantly in question) an independent source of trusted journalism. I believe that in order to survive, the Newspaper industry must reinvent itself and nurture ‘authority’ and ‘trust’ and learn to deliver it in a Kindle/iPhone world.

Do We Care About Newspapers?

I am at WebmasterWorld’s Pubcon, and instead of taking notes just for me, I live Twittered everything I learned. If you don’t follow me on Twitter here are the highlights, in Twitter format.

Also interesting to note, Twitter was the dominant theme of the conference from the opening keynote featuring internet entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki and the nicest guy on Twitter Chris Brogan through to my talk on ‘The Intersection of Search and Social’.

Search.Twitter.com is a game changer. Faster than Google which takes 1-2 days to index @JayBerkowitz

No matter how much we say we’re talking about social media at large, we’re often just talking about Twitter @Chris Brogan

@DellOutlet on Twitter has done over $1,000,000 in business and over 154,000 followers in 1.5 years

Twitter growth 752% Dec. to Dec. (source Compete.com) @btabke

A number of people are using Twitter to search for product information instead of Google. They ask their followers what car to buy what movie to go to @JayBerkowitz

The ultimate form of flattery is how often people retweet your posts I check retweetthis.com all the time @guykawasaki

If you want to be retweeted keep tweets to 120 characters leave room for Rt message @ggroovin

The number one reason people stop following you is too much me me me @ggroovin

32% of the Fortune 500 use Google Analytics @btabke

Great post by @chrisbrogan – 50 ideas for using twitter for business

‘Rankings are dead’ (Important What this means is that due to personalized search you get different results than I do, so you can’t look at rank results anymore) @btabke

Brett Tabke Main Themes: Google is winning, social media has arrived, affiliates are back for site monetization, what recession? @btabke

What’s coming in Search widgets badges, apps, mobile, local and international @SEOmom

@chrisbrogan ‘I cheat for blog content, I take pictures and blog about them like buy this shitty coffee the worst ad i’ve seen’

Originally posted here:
Top Things I Twittered from WebmaterWorld’s Pubcon

So when we started the BAMroll, we wanted to do something more than just offer badges. We wanted to offer the community something along the lines of a social object. Well, we’re still thinking on it, but in the meantime, we have tons of stickers! Their 3 inches in diameter, and perfect for creating all kinds of sticky situations

If you want one, just email me at chris [at] shareresults [dot] com, and we’ll send one your way…

See the original post:
Free BAMroll Stickers!

A couple weeks ago, we went to Podcamp Toronto and delivered a session on affiliate marketing titled Monetizing Communities: Ethics and Strategies. Well, the footage of that session has finally been posted, so we wanted to share it with everyone who could be there with us. At 30 minutes, it’s a bit long, but we explore how online commuity hosts can use affiliate marketing to monetize without compromising the integrity of their community.

The organizers of Podcamp have also posted a media archive of all the sessions. With other presenters including the likes of Chris Brogan, Dave Fleet, Mark Blevis, Terry Fallis and Michelle Sullivan, it’s an archive that’s well worth checking out.

Original post:
Monetizing Communities: Podcamp Toronto Session

View original post here:
BAMroll Update: March 5, 2009

We recently had the pleasure of sitting in on Chris Brogan’s session at Podcamp Toronto 2009. It was called “Heresy, Hypocrisy, and SIn,” and it was about how (1) money isn’t a bad thing, so (2) there’s nothing wrong with trying to make money from your blog, community, or whatever have you. In fact, one of Chris’ concluding points was to give affiliate marketing a second thought — or a first one if you haven’t yet considered it.

Chris segwayed into his session by talking about the economy. He discussed unemployment projections, and how the economy is affecting oil, journalism, and IT. These are the highlights from those introductory remarks. You can also watch his entire 30 min session here.

Read more:
Chris Brogan on the Economy

This Special Edition of Cashing Out will feature a Holiday Contest with the prize being Affiliate Summit Gold Tickets. But first this week’s news:

Google Opens the Floodgates to Domainers
Previously AdSense for Domains was restricted to domainers with 1 million pageviews or greater. In a move that will let them eat at the same trough with companies like Parked.com, Google has opened up Adsense for Domains to everyone. Here is an excellent step-by-step guide by search blogger Brad Geddes for advertisers who want to opt out of this feature.

Layoffs Continue
Online companies continued announcing layoffs this week including:

Sony – Had the biggest announcement this week cutting 8,000 jobs about 4% of its workforce
CBS Interactive – Eliminated 275 jobs about 10% of its staff (including jobs at Last.fm)
TechTarget – Let go of 76 jobs about 12% of its workforce
The Cobalt Group – Cut 45 jobs about 4% of its staff

Stalwarts of the Newspaper Industry Take a Hit
The newspaper industry was hit with a one-two punch as both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune struggle to survive. Perhaps the harder hit of the two was the Chicago Tribune which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The Tribune owns 8 major dailies including the Los Angeles Times and over 20 regional tv stations. The proceedings listed the Tribune with assets of $7.6 billion against a debt of $12.9 billion. Also at stake and not covered by the filing are the Chicago Cubs baseball team which is part of the assets that Tribune owner Samuel Zell is currently attempting to sell.

The New York Times didn’t fare much better this week announcing that it was seeking a $225 million dollar loan against its Midtown Manhattan headquarters. The Times also announced a wage freeze for 2009 impacting all non-union employees. An interesting sidenote and what may indicate a future trend is that Times GM Denise Warren highlighted the roll out of custom widgets for RSS feeds allowing readers to focus on certain content like luxury.

Accel Partners Raises a Cool Billion
We usually don’t talk about VC companies raising money but considering all the normal doom and gloom this weeks announcement by Accel Partners seems like a bright spot. Partially on the strength of a portfolio that includes huge names like Baidu, BitTorrent, Brightcove, comScore, Facebook; Accel celebrated a major coup this week raising just over a billion dollars in funding. The money was raised by Accel Growth Fund, $480 million, and the Accel European III Fund raising $525 million. Accel’s investments focus mostly on the information technology industry like digital media, mobile, and networking.

IZEA’s Kmart Blogger Promotion Sparks Broadsides and Brouhaha
Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang fired off a question on Twitter that ignited a debate about the transparency and credibility of bloggers participating in promotion by IZEA on behalf of Kmart. While six bloggers where enlisted in the campaign including Shoemoney, the brunt of the controversy was weathered by social media expert and all around upstanding fellow Chris Brogran. The whole flare up created some very interesting discussion and debate which is well worth reading: Jeremiah Owyang’s post on the matter, Chris Brogan’s post on the matter.

Revenews on Affiliate Marketing Insider with Linda Woods
The discussion focused on positive aspects of the online economy this Holiday season and predictions for Q1 next year. Listen to the archive of the show here.

Cashing Out Holiday Contest
Interested in going to upcoming Affiliate Summit West? Revenews is giving away five Gold Passes to the show as a thank you to our readers. How do you win? Simple, answer the following five questions correctly and send your answers to angel /at/ revenews.com

1) When was the first installment of Cashing Out?
2) How much did Affiliate Marketer’s Give Back raise during the Susan G. Komen Seattle Walk for Breast Cancer?
3) What did CPAEmpire change its name to?
4) Whose infamous piece of linkbait asked you to “Kill Your Blog”?
5) What company boasted it’s biggest Black Friday ever?

First five people to send in the right answers (all of which can be found in previous editions of the Cashing Out segment on Revenews) will win the passes. Contest open until the next Cashing Out segment is published on December 21st. Thank you for reading and good luck!

Go here to see the original:
Cashing Out: Week of Dec 7th – 13th, 2008 in Online Marketing News Plus Holiday Contest

Affiliate Summit East is only a week away and the conference has grown quite a bit. Before you get lost in the conference chaos and inevitable Boston pub crawls, I thought I should give my top five picks for sessions you can’t afford to miss:

1) NY Tax Laws – Issues and Solutions

The so called Amazon Tax has set the industry abuzz since it ambushed everyone in May. Since then several legal challenges have been launched against the law with Amazon itself weighing in. On a more grass roots basis, New York affiliates have come together to try to provide mutual support and discuss strategies to overcome the impact of the law. Whether you are a New York affiliate or an affiliate in another state the fallout from this ruling is bound to impact you. Same goes for merchants, especially since states like Texas are considering similar laws. I also have to wonder about merchants who are using one of the dozens of CPA networks in conjunction with the more traditional affiliate channel and how this tax might impact them.

The session should be quite informative with Google Affiliate Network, a lawyer specializing in internet law and NY Affiliate Voice all participating.

Panelists include:

-Melaine Seery, Affiliate from NY Affiliate Voice
-Chris Henger , Group Product Manager, Google Affiliate Network
-Clarke D. Walton, Internet Lawyer, Walton Law Firm, P.C.
-Kim Rodgers, Affiliate Manager, 4Checks.com
-Adam Riemer, Director of Marketing and Client Relations, Downtown Ecommerce Partners

2) Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing

If it wasn’t for the timeliness of the Amazon Tax, this session would have been my number 1 pick. It almost feels like a heavy weight fight. Very few in our industry don’t have an opinion about this topic and many have made it out to be a good v. evil contest between the vocal constituency at ABestWeb.com versus the aggressive sales tactics of certain affiliates.

Despite the billing I don’t see things as black and white. Personally, rather than this falling into a session of verbal fireworks, I would like to see an in depth discussion of the issues at hand. I think few are more qualified than this panel to delve into topics beyond the emotional response in order to get to the heart of the matter. Whatever your opinion, be it laissez-faire or the ethical high road, this is not a session to miss.

Panelists include:

-Haiko de Poel Jr, Owner, ABestWeb
-Paul Nichols, Director of Sales, Ebates
-Brian Littleton, President/CEO, ShareASale
-Michel Jones, COO, Pepperjam
-Connie Berg, CEO, FlamingoWorld
-Chuck Hamrick, Affiliate Manager, AffiliateCREW

3) Performance Marketing Alliance Q&A

In many ways my number 3 pick can be seen as logical fallout from my first two picks. The Performance Marketing Alliance was born out of a long standing need for an industry association and the catalyst of the Amazon Tax. Since its birth some very public and bitter fights have broken out on various forums, including ABW, about the purpose of such an agency. Factions seemed to pop everywhere, egos were bruised, and very unprofessional attitudes were displayed. Of course, the ubiquitous conspiracy theories regarding the “true” purpose of such an association followed.

At the center of that storm has been Rebecca Madigan, who has taken on the administrative tasks of putting such an organization together. Hopefully this session will provide a productive forum to discuss concerns and clarify the purpose of the association.

Panelist:

-Rebecca Madigan, Performance Marketing Alliance

4) How Social Media is Changing Affiliate Marketing

Well, my first three picks were kind of heavy however, this one is focused on what I believe will drive a lot of growth in our industry. I think you would be hard pressed to pick a group more in tuned to what’s hot, and more importantly what works, in the social media space than this panel. They are a bit of a dream team: Chris Brogan or Stephanie Agresta could hold a session all by themselves; the fact that Rob Key and Ted Murphy are in the mix just makes it that much more relevant for merchants.

If you are a merchant planning to launch a social media campaign or an affiliate planning to employ social media tactics then this is a session not to miss.

Panelist include:

-Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media
-Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
-Stephanie Agresta, Owner, Internet Geek Girl
-Ted Murphy, Founder / CEO, IZEA

5) State of the Ad Networks

There are plenty of changes in the options and tactics merchants can employ in online advertising. One of the biggest has been the slow transition of display inventory moving from the traditional CPM model to a CPA or CPV model. Much of this change was driven by the success of companies like DrivePM. Ad networks have plenty of new opportunities, publishers and merchants alike. The fact that Todd Crawford is moderating this session just means that it will be insightful and filled with some razor sharp wit.

Panelists include:

-Todd Crawford, Owner, ToddTalks
-Aleck Schleider, VP of Marketing, AOL’s Platform-A Division
-Bob King, CEO, ClickBank
-Don Mathis, President, Epic Advertising
-Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage

That’s the rundown of my picks for Affiliate Summit East in Boston. What sessions are you looking forward to?

Excerpted from:
Top 5 Must See Sessions at Affiliate Summit

I expect something tasteful in a place of mourning and remembrance. Maybe I am old-fashioned but ads for LavaLife, who has never been the most subtle advertiser in the dating industry, on a site meant to be a memorial for loved ones is not what I expect to see. Imagine heading down to your local cemetery and seeing a billboard on cemetery grounds that says “Come to where mature singles click”.

What exactly is the message to the consumer? “Now that you’ve lost your loved one and are single again…”

The ad is on a site called Tributes.com which received 4.5 million dollars in funding last week, according to Wired Magazine. The site was put together by Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor and is supposed to help facilitate “a new, important, way of grieving”. Makes perfect sense to display a LavaLife ad.

Now to be fair, the ad, which is posted through DoubleClick, does seem to be a remnant display. Put in rotation to target a certain segment of web property, it just happened to display on the Tributes.com beta landing page.

For me it is the perfect example of the kind of misstep marketers need to avoid.

Tributes.com is supposed to be a community where people can come together to grieve and share memories of their loved ones. Every community has a particular purpose, a particular reason people have come together to socialize. If you are a marketer representing a particular brand you should be very aware of how your message will be delivered to that community. The question of whether or not an ad is appropriate is as equally important as whether or not it is engaging.

This week’s ThoughtShapers highlighted a quote by Chris Brogan, Vice President of Strategy & Technology at CrossTech Media and social media guru, where during an interview with MarketingProfs he said, “When marketers see social media as yet another channel to drive a message down, they’re missing the boat. Worse, they’re making themselves look insensitive, unpleasant, and not worth the community’s time.”

Definitely the term “insensitive” and perhaps even the term “unpleasant” can easily be associated to the wayward placement of the LavaLife ad.

I also think there is a greater note of caution which should be heeded.

Recently when I was at the Web 2.0 Expo the exhibit hall floor was filled with companies pitching instant shake and bake communities so merchants could socialize their brand. It is the real life equivalent of an auto dealership providing coffee for its patrons. If I am there to buy a car I may well appreciate the coffee. It doesn’t mean I am going to go hang out the local dealership in place of my favorite coffee joint.

Successful communities form in an organic manner. Dressing up advertising creative to look like a community simply to get a message across is not the same as developing a true community.

With this corporate rush to embrace social media it will be interesting to see if there will be a consumer backlash. Soon we will know whether this glut of corporate social sites will be boom towns or ghost towns.

Continued here:
Bring Out Your Dead