Make Money Online

Slowly but surely, Bing is building more bang.

For the third month in a row, Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing gained a slight increase in the U.S. search market. Accounting for 9.3% of U.S web searches for the month of August, a .4% increase from its July share of 8.9%, Bing continues to gain market share from its giant competitor, Google.

Similar data indicates that Google remained the leader of the U.S. search and advertising market with a 64.6% market share in August; this down 0.1% from July. Yahoo also dipped from a 20.1% market share to 19.3%.

While comScore reports on Bing’s rising popularity, it still finds that most Google users are still turning to old-faithful. That being said, Bing’s steady rise does present an attractive opportunity to affiliates who might be ready to try their optimization hand with another search engine, which for the time being remains less popular, but perhaps less competitive as well.

Here is what our experts recommend for affiliates that want to experiment with Bing to get more traffic:

1. Experiment with PPC on this engine to test the ‘keyword waters’. How does your keyword performance compare with your current Google campaign or past campaigns you have run?

2. If you own multiple sites you might want to create a site specifically optimized for Bing – remember that this may take some time to determine its success, so be prepared to invest 6-12 months on this project.

3. Set-up your additional affiliate marketing ID’s in your affiliate account to track traffic results and conversions. In Share Results you can create additional site profiles and track performance of specific key words using the ACID ID Tool. Speak to your affiliate manager to learn how you can set this up today!

4. Set-up monitor tools to monitor site performance with your favorite third part analytics account.

Here are some recommendations for merchants wanting to build their business with Bing:

1. Suggestions 1 & 4 that that we made for affiliates above, are equally important for merchants, plus:

2. Make sure your affiliate program is set up to support Bing. Have creatives such as text links featuring products that you think would work well with Bing (for example, your target consumers who would be using Bing), and clear policies about PPC.

By all reports, Bing is doing well—very well. Its user friendly and attractive design and useful way of sifting through information is, if nothing else, turning heads. Who knows if those heads will stay permanently glued to Bing, but the potential is definitely there.

Are you on board with Bing? We want to know!

The Bing search engine was launched by Microsoft in June 2009 and was followed in July by a search tie-up with rival Yahoo .

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A successful affiliate needs the right tools and resources to maximize conversions, and create and maintain a successful online presence. Part of this equation also includes staying in-the-know about important industry information, and keeping abreast with current search news, as this provides the affiliate with further opportunity to target additional market segments.

So when Microsoft and Yahoo! reached a deal whereby Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power Yahoo search, it got our attention. As you know, getting ranked in search engines takes time. Whether that transition period takes an affiliate 6 months, 12 months or longer, it can be a definite advantage to start optimizing now, to ensure you get found later.

There is still so much up in the air, like when exactly this will go live, but here’s what we know for sure.

What We Know for Sure
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10-year license to Yahoo’s core search technologies.
• Bing will become the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites.
• Yahoo will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
• Microsoft’s AdCenter platform will fulfill self-serve advertising for both companies, and AdCenter will set prices for all search ads.
• The deal is estimated to be worth an extra $500 million in annual operating income and $200 million in capital expenditure savings to Yahoo.

What Yahoo Says
“This deal will make the difference between a great Yahoo! search experience and an awesome one!” Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz. In an interview with CNBC, Bartz talks about the aspects of Yahoo’s strategy, and its value to consumers, advertisers and publishers.

What Microsoft Says
“This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.” Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer.

What this Means for Affiliate Marketing
It’s far too early to draw any conclusions, but we think at the very least that affiliates should start optimizing for both Bing AND Google, and that Bing certainly has the potential of becoming a strong competitor. Especially since Yahoo will be powered by it in the upcoming future.

What We Like About Bing
What is interesting about Bing’s platform is that it focuses on making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business. This kind of platform is great for affiliates, who are often involved in helping consumers make decisions about which products and services they should buy.

And so far the feedback on Bing is pretty positive. It’s still too early to say whether people will make a permanent switch away from Google, but either way, we think the online playing field is changing, and affiliates best optimize now, and Bing later.

What are your thoughts on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal? Will this affect the way you conduct your affiliate marketing?

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Optimize Now, and Bing Later

I’m going to start with a quick history of AOL. Back in the early days, AOL had Rainman, its proprietary coding language that was thankfully replaced by HTML. Only AOL didn’t get that the Web had made its simple walled garden obsolete until it was too late. Then AOL opened the doors and let its users go everywhere. At some point AOL bought Netscape and then did nothing with the browser, the content or the gateways to search and other areas of the Net. Then the gates slammed shut and you needed to be an AOL member to get to AOL’s proprietary content. Then they opened again. I’m not sure where the gates are today or if Time Warner burned them at some point. In other words, AOL rarely had a coherent or consistent plan on how to let its members onto the Web or Web surfers onto AOL. Did you hear that AOL is being spun off by Time Warner? And that’s not AOL Time Warner.

That brings us to Microsoft, the largest software company in the world and a company with one of the world’s highest market caps. You know that it must be a leader in anything it tries, especially something as critical as the Web. Remember years ago when everyone said that Microsoft had missed the boat and it was too late but Bill Gates announced MSN with much fanfare? Since that time, MSN has suffered AOLitis, that is, a lack of identity.

MSN lost to Google. MSN became Live.com while still being MSN at times. (I think there was even Start.com when Windows95 came out.) Live.com seemed like a good name. Not if you suffer from AOLitis. Live.com now redirects to Bing.com, Microsoft’s latest Web idea.

I have to give kudos to Microsoft for trying to start over from scratch at the 10 years of failure in search. Google won, we all know that. In fact, Google won to such an extent that the one well-designed part of the Bing interface is search results (both natural and paid) that look exactly like Google’s search results. (Sorry, I don’t have time to take screenshots today. It’s all there if you go to Google and Bing.)

Take a look at Bing. Do you get it from looking at it? What do hot air balloons have to do with search or any of the other features of the site? The one resounding comment from the quick poll I did was that people think that this looks like a typosquatter’s landing page, not the search engine of a top 3 Web property.

I wish Microsoft luck with its new search engine. I really and truly hope that it works. I would like to see a real competitor to Google. I think that the Web needs competition instead of one player with upwards of 80% control of the Web’s jumping off point. I just don’t see how Bing.com is the answer.

Comments on Techcrunch sum it up best. Many people think that Bing stands for But it’s not Google!

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OpenX Launches Online Advertising Marketplace

OpenX, a trusted ad serving utility for publishers, has finally stepped into ad network ring with the launch of OpenX Marketplace. While the technology packaged in the service is not groundbreaking, no other ad network enjoys the kind of trust OpenX does with its publishers which should give them an enviable amount of leverage and adoption.

Google Posts Mixed Earnings Results in Q1

Google’s publishing of its Q1 results was met with mixed response. Revenues generated from Google’s partner sites through AdSense generated $1.64 billion a decrease of 3% from first quarter of 2008, while aggregate paid clicks increased 17% over the same time period. Slides are below:

Microsoft Merges Live Search Products and Cashback

Seems like a no-brainer but Microsoft has finally merged its Live Search Cashback platform with Live Search Products into a single experience. Why this wasn’t done when Cashback was launched in 2007 is anybody’s guess.

Skype Testing Click-To-Call Ads

With 405 million users Skype is starting to test click-to-call ads with a local focus in Europe and New Zealand. As part of this initiative Skype is retooling an old feature SkypeFind, Skype’s business directory, to cater to potential telephone directory partners like the Yellow Pages. Telephone directories could upsell to advertisers the ability to make calls to their numbers free to consumers through Skype.

Obama Announces CTO

President Barack Obama has named Aneesh Paul Chopra as the new Chief Technology Officer. Chopra was serving as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology with accolades that include the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s 2007 State Leadership Advocacy Award. Along with advising on ways to streamline healthcare communication and reduce costs, Chopra will be charged with advising the Administration on technology matters. It will be interesting to see how such issues as net neutrality will be impacted.

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Cashing Out: Week of April 12-18th, 2009 in Online Marketing News

Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s $2.5 Billion Merger

A press release announced the merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation. The newly formed Live Nation Entertainment is a combined enterprise with a value of approximately $2.5 billion. According to the release the new company is focused on improving ticket pricing and technology, and increasing event attendance. The name change was spurred in hopes of distancing the new company from negative press surrounding Ticketmaster. Live Nation Entertainment is projected to generate $6 billion in revenue in ‘09.

Microsoft Store Coming to a Neighborhood Near You

Seeking some of Apple’s success with retail outlets, Microsoft threw its hat into the ring when it named David Porter as the new Corporate Vice President of Retail Stores. Porter comes to Microsoft from Dreamworks SKG and with an extensive background in retail with Wal-Mart. According to the release, “the purpose of opening these stores is to create deeper engagement with consumers and continue to learn firsthand about what they want and how they buy”. Perhaps they should try making software that works.

So Much for Keeping Things Quiet: Facebook and ConnectU series of settlement revelations

The terms of settlements often not disclosed. This week a series of nearly slapstick events revealed the terms of the settlement between ConnectU and Facebook. First to let the cat out of the bag was the lawfirm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, which formerly repersented ConnectU, when an ad (pdf) the firm created was found and published by the Recorder. In the ad the lawfirm claims to have won a $65 million settlement against Facebook.

Not to be outdone the following day Facebook security was outwitted when the Associated Press got a hold of an electronic document containing elements of the hearing that had been redacted and pasted those into the redacted version (pdf) of the transcript. According to AP the transcript revealed that Facebook’s own internal appraisal was $3.7 billion. Significantly lower than $15 billion valuation by Miscrosoft in 2007. The document also revealed that under their settlement, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock.

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Cashing Out: Week of February 8-14th, 2009 in Online Marketing News

Squidoo does not disclose directly their formula for

determining Lensrank. However, they do provide

advice on what constitutes a quality lens.

Also, you can identify the factors that influence the lensrank

of a Squidoo lens by watching closely the performance of

your lenses after you have taken various actions. You can

determine what has a positive influence on lensrank.

I have found that one of the most consistently positive

influences has been regular updating and, more specifically,

daily updating.

Daily updating can be a real challenge, particularly for

a lengthy lens. Here are some strategies that make daily

updating manageable:

1. add to, or change, your tags (you have up to 40, but keep

them tightly focused)

2. create a “hint of the day/week” module which you

update

3. add a featured lens module for your own lenses and

change the lenses featured on a regular/daily basis

4. add a featured lens module for lenses of other Squidoo

Lensmasters who cover a similar topic (you can build

a list elsewhere and use that to update your featured

lens module, or take them from your “favourites”)

5. add a links list module for relevant links and regularly

add to, or refine, this module

6. add a Plexo list module and invite your readers

to add lenses that are relevant to your theme and

to vote for the best lens

(you can determine which ones get accepted)

7. check your headings, text and images – make regular

changes to refine your lens presentation.

Make sure you publish your lens when you have made

a change, otherwise your lens will not be recognized as

updated.

Regular, even daily, updating will improve your

Lensrank and your position on Google results. I am

also very confident that it contributes positively

to the Page Rank of your Squidoo lens.

Both Squidoo and Google value focused, regularly

updated content – it’s what ultimately determines

the usefulness of search engines.

Product of the Week: Twitter Hints

Well this is one of the best, fr^e resources about Twitter.

You not only get a 30 page Twitter Hints e-Book but

also three videos on Twitter marketing. You can learn

to make Twitter work for you, how to integrate Twitter

with other social marketing sites and how best to

customize Twitter for responsiveness and automation.

http://twitterhints.com/?vip=961

For further information on Twitter marketing, visit

my squidoo lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/howtousetwitter

************************************************

Ron Passfield is a Top 100 Squidoo Lensmaster

and provides free resources for Squidoo affiliate

marketing on his Squidoo lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

Subscribe to Ron’s free Squidoo Marketing e-course:

http://www.smsecourse.squidoomarketingstrategies.com/

Ron is the author of the ebook:

Squidoo Marketing Strategies

****************************************************

The rest is here:
Squidoo: Improve lensrank with regular updating

The reliability of cloud computing has been a hot topic recently, partly because glitches in the cloud don’t happen behind closed doors as with traditional on-premises solutions for businesses. Instead, when a small number of cloud computing users have problems, it makes headlines. As with most things at Google, we are fanatical about measuring the availability of Gmail, and we thought it best to simply share our reliability metrics, which we measure as average uptime per user based on server-side error rates. We think this reliability metric lets you do a true side-by-side comparison with other solutions.

We measure every server request for every user, every moment of every day. Any millisecond delay is logged. Over the last year, Gmail has been available more than 99.9 percent of the time — for everyone, both consumers and business users. The vast majority of people using Gmail have seen few issues, experienced no downtime, and have continued to have a great Gmail experience, with exception of an outage in August 2008. If you average all these data together, including the August outage, across the entire Gmail service, there has been an aggregate 10-15 minutes of downtime per month over the last year of providing the service. That 10-15 minutes per month average represents small delays of a couple of seconds here and there. A very small number of people have unfortunately been subject to some disruption of service that affected them for a few minutes or a few hours. For those users, we are very sorry. And for Google Apps Premier Edition customers, we have extended service level agreement credits to them.

So how does greater than 99.9 percent reliability compare to more conventional approaches for business email? We asked some experts. Naturally, the normal caveats apply for on-premises solutions, since each individual business environment will vary, depending on server reliability, staff response time, and actual maintenance schedules for each application.

According to the research firm Radicati Group, companies with on-premises email solutions averaged from 30 to 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime and an additional 36 to 90 minutes of planned downtime per month.¹

Looking just at the unplanned outages that catch IT staffs by surprise, these results suggest Gmail is twice as reliable as a Novell GroupWise solution, and four times more reliable than a Microsoft Exchange-based solution that companies must maintain themselves. And higher reliability translates to higher employee productivity. Gmail’s reliability jumps to more than four times as reliable as a GroupWise solution and 10 times more reliable than an Exchange-based solution if you factor in the planned outages inherent in on-premises messaging platforms. But this isn’t the only way Google Apps helps businesses do more with their resources. Compared to the costs of Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus or Novell GroupWise — including software licensing, server expenses and the labor associated with deploying, maintaining and upgrading them on a regular basis — Google Apps leaves companies with much more time and money to focus on their real business.

We are now extending what we’ve learned from Gmail to the other applications in Google Apps.

Today, we’re announcing that we will extend the 99.9 percent service level agreement we offer Premier Edition customers on Gmail to Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk. We have been delivering high levels of reliability across all these products, so it makes sense to extend our guarantees to them.

More than 1 million businesses have selected Google Apps to run their business, and tens of millions of people use Gmail every day. With this type of adoption, a disruption of any size — even a minor one affecting fewer than 0.003% of Google Apps Premier Edition users, like the one a few weeks ago — attracts a disproportional amount of attention. We’ve made a series of commitments to improve our communications with customers during any outages, and we have an unwavering commitment to make all issues visible and transparent through our open user groups.

Google is one of the 1 million businesses that run on Google Apps, and any service interruption affects our users and our business; our engineers are also some of our most demanding customers. We understand the importance of delivering on the cloud’s promise of greater security, reliability and capability at lower cost. We are hugely thankful to our customers who drive us to become better every day.

1. The Radicati Group, 2008. “Corporate IT Survey – Messaging & Collaboration, 2008-2009″

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Product Management Director, Google Enterprise

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What we learned from 1 million businesses in the cloud

The Inc. 500 Conference and Awards Ceremony is set to take place in Washington D.C., September 18 – 20 at the Gaylord National Resort And Convention Center. Here, Jay Berkowitz will review, “The Ten Hottest Internet Marketing Strategies”and will cover the latest in marketing trends and internet advertising strategies.

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Inc. 500 Conference Hosts Jay Berkowtiz And Other Professional Conference Speakers

Guys from digg.com have been very active this week. They launched a new mobile website specially designed for smart phones like Treo, Blackberry and the new popular iPHONE. You can reach the mobile website of Digg at m.digg.com. Also they added a new feature or application that will allow anyone who currently uses Facebook to seamlessly become a Digg user and start sharing and digging right away. This allows both Facebook and Digg users to easily share the content they care about with the audience at large.

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New mobile digg.com

I hate Vista. Seriously. After hours of trying to get the damn thing to install on more than 3 PCs, running the beta for 6 months and then running the OS from Jan 07 to May 07, I hate this OS. Leopard had me at hello, but Vista pissed me off within hours… If you are a regular reader, you know that I have a few posts on Vista here already (all of which bring me serious search traffic, so I can’t be alone in my hatred):

• Love it
• Removed it
• Still bitching about removing Vista

But, after seeing the viral Mojave Experiment (thanks Justin), I’m tempted to give Microsoft another chance. Does that sound crazy coming from a Yahoo! employee?

More on Mojave Experiment at TechMeme.

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Mojave Experiment – Vista Revisited

Chick-fil-A is preparing for their 4th annual “Cow Tipping” event on July 11th, don’t worry, no cows will be harmed for this one. They are offering a free chicken meal for those who are brave enough to dress up like a cow for lunch.

The meal includes an entree of choice, a side item and a beverage. Customers partially dressed in cow attire, such as a cow-spotted scarf, will receive a complimentary entree.

Credit:
Going Cow Tipping?

As gas prices increase, so does online discussion of driving. There has been an increase in discussions in various social media sites on the topics of driving, as well as rising food costs.
Consumers are using social media to share gas-saving tips, and research alternative modes of transportation, as well as to discuss changes in shopping and tips for savings.
According to Marketing Vox:
• Consumers are describing specific changes to the way they shop, such as using coupons and buying sale-priced items.
• As consumers venture online to hunt for the best deals, traffic to weekly circulars ads on retail banner websites was up 155% in May 2008 compared with May 2007.
“Shoppers are enthusiastically sharing deals online in discussion forums and on blogs, and marketers who reach these customers with relevant savings will likely engender the support of consumers looking to stretch their dollars,” claims Nielsen Online.
The business model of coupon sites, and coupon site affiliates, could not have a better time for positioning of online marketing, than now.

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The time is now for a coupon site

I bought gas today and reached a new sad milestone on the pump…

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A very sad moment…

I was interviewed for a newspaper story on this topic today! And I was referred to a post by Kristina Cowan called 7 Tips For Boosting Your Career Through Online Social Networks.

With a recession looming (or here already) it is more critical than ever to start build your network IMMEDIATELY. I hope things don’t get any worse, but unfortunately, many Americans are going to be looking for work in the next 6-12 months. Now is the time to lay the foundation of a strong network of friends and business relationships that you can call upon if you, or someone close to you needs help.

I told the journalist that in my mind everyone should follow these three key steps.

1. Create a great profile in the online social network that you get invited to join most frequently. If you get a lot of LinkedIn invites, it is likely that your personal ‘network’ can be found there. If you hear from a lot of friends on Facebook that is the place for you. Kristina covered this topic extremely well in her blog.

2. Online networking is still networking. The old saying is that ‘you must give to get’. What that means in online communities is you should help people out, answer their questions, connect people looking for jobs with opportunities you know about, participate in groups on the social networks. Find things that interest you or groups focused on areas that you have a lot of knowledge about. Participate actively and volunteer for any possible organization roles.

3. The final step is to Build your personal brand online. Develop a blog or website focused on your unique area of business expertise or a personal passion area. A blog on Blogger.com or WordPress.com is free! And, these blogs can be formatted to look like a website, updates take minutes to do and are as easy as sending an email. By making 3-4 posts a week you’ll quickly develop a following and Google and the other search engines will start showing your posts in the search results. Link to other popular bloggers who cover the same subject matter as you and comment on their blogs to develop your link to the online community.

Good luck building your online presence. I hope you won’t need to fall back on your network, but if you need it in 6 months, you’ll be happy you started today, instead of the day after a layoff.

Hat tip to Sonia Meisenheimer

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Build your Network NOW to prepare for economic uncertainty!

Experience an extremely high conversion rate with this 5-Star award-winning Adware andamp; Spyware Removal program.

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Adware & Spyware Removal.