Make Money Online

There has been a lot of rumor and speculation lately about exactly how and when Google would start becoming an affiliate and taking their sponsored search results and turn them into CPA placements for their Google Affiliate Network partners. Some threads have even gone as far as to call into question how Google has been treating search affiliates and possibly “clearing the space” for them to take over the revenue and commissions earned by these “partners”. Read this scary thread over at Webmaster World.

Here is a screen shot I took today on a routine product search for USB extension cables: (click on the image for a full size view)

There are a few things I find interesting:

1. These results seem to duplicate some of the organic product search results, providing what I consider a poor user experience.

2. The 3 Google Ads take up the large majority of the sponsored listing space, pushing out their other advertisers.

3. Apparently the single URL policy doesn’t apply to these ads, since PC Connection is listed in all 3 sponsored Ads.

Is this the future? If so how will this affect search affiliates and Google’s policies towards affiliate PPC partners? If this is the new direction, will this put pressure on the merchants to be part of the Google Affiliate Network, vs CJ and Linkshare?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

See the rest here:
The Google Affiliate Juggernaut

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This is a tale of two types of internet celebrities: those that fight hard to give back to their community and those that sit on the sidelines.

First, I want to give accolades to the Affiliate Marketers Give Back team who in their third straight year participated in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer raising over $50,000 in the fight against the disease. Having taken part in the walk last year I had the pleasure of seeing firsthand the type of work team leader Missy Ward, Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, puts in not only to raise awareness of breast cancer and fundraise for the cause  but to help the AMGB team get through the long miles of the walk.

The media is full of talk on how some celebrities use their high profiles to serve as role models. Well Missy, despite her high profile in our community, has always made time for such causes as Big Brother/Big Sisters and the Susan G Komen Foundation. This year the AMGB team Missy assembled consisted of Brook Schaaf of Schaaf Consulting, Chris Pearson of DIYThemes, Melissa Salas of Buy.com, Kevin Strawbridge of DealTaker.com, and Lynette LaPlante a 1-year survivor (all of whom are celebrities in my book!).

Also pledged to the team was Brian Clark, aka Copyblogger. Brian has also become a bit of an online celebrity. But apparently he’s now so famous that he couldn’t even be bothered to show up for the Walk on September the 12th and 13th.

Now, it’s understandable to get cold feet at such an event: walking 40 miles in the LA sun is not pleasant. It’s also understandable if some personal or health condition came into play that prevented his participation. But Brian did not only fail to show up to the event, cheer from the sidelines, or provide support during lunch or at dinner; he didn’t even issue one tweet about the event.

Brian Clark is someone who makes his living tweeting and blogging. One tweet from him is valuable; after all he has 35,000 followers. A tweet is the easiest way he could have used to provide support and awareness for everyone involved in the Avon Walk. But apparently even 140 characters was too much to ask.

Instead, Brian occupied himself on Sept 12-13th making inane “not really” tweets with @gapingvoid and quoting George Bernard Shaw. Apparently ‘Man and Superman’ is a concept that Brian is unfamiliar with. Even the strength of the women on his team couldn’t force him to follow through on his commitments.  Maybe someone should send his Kindle the Cliff Notes version.

He didn’t even take the time to respond when AMGB team members teasingly thanked him for providing nonexistent dinner and backrubs at the event. He was a no show in every sense of the term.

Well at least if Brian Clark doesn’t know how to be a team member or role model for his community he can take solace in the fact he’s learned how to handle critisims from drunk Swiss guys. Now that’s insight that’s valuable to everyone.

See the rest here:
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Recently I discussed “CPSA” (Cost Per Social Action), a potential pricing model that recognizes the growing importance of measuring a “social action”. This model is a variation of CPA (Cost Per Action). Both CPSA and CPA are far superior to basic CPM, which measures the cost of impressions, or even CPC, which relies on the cost of clicks.

In the final analysis, all online advertisers should be adopting, at the very least, a CPL (Cost Per Lead) model. After all, what every advertiser really wants from an online ad is a qualified lead – a prospect who has a demonstrated proclivity to buy. That’s the type of lead worthy of an advertising investment.

The problem is that lately, the price of ad impressions on websites has fallen. It’s largely because ad networks have lowered the barrier to advertising by spreading costs across many sites. So advertisers can get tantalizingly more impressions, and maybe even more clicks, for less money.

But is that a good thing? The metrics of more impressions can be deceiving – the pricing may look attractive, but ads with minimal targeting produce unqualified responses. What’s the value of lots of responses if they do not turn into the right leads?

The answer to the dilemma is for website publishers to sell, and advertisers to demand, ad space that works harder. In short, ads need to help qualify the respondent.

An article in Forbes references a recent report that suggests “marketers will pay publishers an average price of $2.27 for each reader they can convince to fill out a form with their real name and e-mail address, along with a few bits of personal data such as their Twitter handle, phone number or answers to questions about their shopping habits.”

While over $2 CPL may seem like a lot of money, the advertiser is, in effect, paying for valuable data about an individual prospect. This data can then be used to do a better job of communicating product benefits and, hopefully, convincing the prospect to buy. Forbes says the “hefty price [of CPL] suggests publishers should consider abandoning cheap ads sold for guaranteed prices and should instead try to use space on their Web pages to convince readers to turn over their personal information.”

The implications of this are significant, however. Ads need to engage prospects, and prospects must want to ante up details about themselves. In an age of privacy concerns, this could be a tall order.

Still, if online advertisers want to make the smartest advertising investment, they’ll soon recognize that it makes sense to pay a higher CPL to get higher quality leads. In the long run, they’re likely to see a higher conversion rate, and therefore a higher rate of return. That’s why CPM and CPC are being questioned more and more – and why the online world could be in for a big change in perspective.

See the rest here:
Is CPL the Real Deal?

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I have two tales to tell about my recent experiment with Twitter. Up until last month, I was in the I-just-don’t-get-Twitter group. You know them. We all know them. They are more reasonable than the I-refuse-to-use-Facebook crowd.

It’s not often that I can credit my mother with getting me to use new technology (it usually works the other way) but she gave me an article in reference to something unrelated to this. One of the conclusions of the article was that we need to use new technology to understand it. That is a requirement of my job and I’ve slipped a little in fulfilling my job requirements lately (too many long stories to get into).

Hmmm, I didn’t get why anyone would tweet or what @, RT and # were all about. I could read about it but that wouldn’t do it. No toe in the water for me. I decided to dive in head first.

There was another big change in my life that made this possible. My fourth and final Sidekick (the old LX) was on the fritz. Worse yet, it wouldn’t sync with Vista (no discussions on Vista, please). I require a spacious thumbpad so I tested out the Android G1. (Yes, it has flaws but it suits my needs better than any phone on the market. I am happy to write about my phone journey but don’t want to go down that path here).

After a few weeks, here’s what I have found about Twitter:

1. It helps to know people personally. At least I found it to be a lot more fun knowing people and interacting with them as opposed to writing to the Tweetosphere.
   
2. You need to be able to take it wherever you go that you probably have dry hands (see phone change above).
   
3. 140 characters is perfect for my sense of humor. (My first apology to @wporter.)
   
4. As always, don’t believe everything you read. Just ask Jeff Goldblum I might have picked a perfect time to try it out as Twitter was alive with all off the real and fake celebrity deaths.
   

I’m a convert. I still have some open questions. I watched the tweebate between @samharrelson and @jimkukral over using hashtags (you know, the #’s) for marketing purposes. Sam thinks it is spam and Jim thinks it is great marketing. Jim’s solution to Sam was for Sam to unfollow anyone he thinks abuses them. The problem is, Sam will have to unfollow Jim and not see the rest of what Jim tweets. My question on it is whether people should have personal and work Twitter accounts. I think so for people who believe in unbridled marketing. I’m still not sure how Twitter will be monetized (who among us is) but it will be by someone, it just may not be Twitter.

Experiment gone awry

Every now and then I would search for people I know or want to follow on Twitter. There was one person who I couldn’t find. (Did I mention that people search on Twitter sucks and I was too lazy to find the better solutions?) So I typed in his name.

(My 2nd apology to @wporter) Many of you can see the train wreck that is coming…

You guessed it… I looked up twitter.com/jeffmolander. There was nothing there. If you remember the auction of jeffmolander.com three years ago, you can guess the next part. Yes, I opened an account for Jeff. I am coming clean within days as it is a prank now but would go far beyond that if I kept up the charade.

I gave myself a simple prime directive: Do not put words into Jeff’s mouth (or on his fingers, as it were). I had 5 tweets: 4 were artiles written by Jeff himself plus one of “OK, now what?” I really wanted to get into a few debates that sparked but I resisted the urge. The only other thing I did was to follow people. Word had to get out somehow that Jeff Molander was on Twitter, especially since he has written so many articles against Twitter including “There is no such thing as social media”. [There is social media, Jeff. People are social creatures by nature and are demanding that of us. Whether or not one site or another fulfills its own mission or a necessary purpose is a different story.]

The response was incredible. People seem to be torn between hating Jeff and generally liking him while disagreeing with what he says and stands for. It was such a big deal that Jeff Molander finally got on Twitter that Wayne Porter was shaken out of a deep sleep and had to check Twitter.

Protect your brand

Here’s what I don’t get… I bought and auctioned off jeffmolander.com for charity. Jeff uses it now. He also owns jeffreymolander.com which redirects to the other. Why didn’t he have @jeffmolander?

The punchline

Kim Rowley tweeted the following: @jeffmolander Long time no see Mr Molander! Is this account taking over your @jeffreymolander acct? Leading double life? Or experimenting?

Oops…

I sent the password to Jeff for his new account where he is more popular… OK, more notorious.

[Please direct all flames to @TheDavidLewis]

Read more from the original source:
My Twitter Experiment -or- I am not Jeff Molander

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A funny thing happened on our way to the Capital and visions of democratic grandeur…

You’ve all read about the Amazon Tax spreading from New York to other states including California, North Carolina, Hawaii and Rhode Island. Here’s the crazy thing… there is little or no revenue behind these bills, only lost revenue for affiliates and lost jobs for employees. Sounds like a great way to generate revenue for the states, eh?

AB178 couldn’t get out of committee

AB178 was California’s version. It stalled in the State Assembly’s Revenue and Tax sub-committee. There weren’t enough votes for passage. In fact, there weren’t enough votes for it to be heard in committee and it was pulled by the bills author (Assemblymember Nancy Skinner from Berkeley) the day it was to be heard.

What’s the democratic solution? Instead of debating it and hearing public opinion, the Budget Conference Committee snuck it into the budget at the last minute (that is, after 6pm on the last day of weeks of budget negotiations).

Both the State Assembly and Senate passed budgets yesterday and today that included changes to nexus. Governor Schwarzenegger has promised to veto any budget that has an increase that is passed by a simple majority instead of the 2/3 required for tax increases. Whether a game or not, legally he is correct.

$150,000,000 is a lot of money!

I can see why the state legislators are drooling at lobbyists promise of $150,000,000 in revenue for the state. That’s a lot of money! I’d go after that too if I could.

The problem is that the number doesn’t look at the downside, only at all of the upside potential. Here are the assumptions:

1. All stores with affiliate programs maintain their programs and their California affiliates and decide to collect California sales tax.
2. Oops, there isn’t a second assumption. Just the one.

What if the assumption is wrong?

I’m glad you asked. If the assumption is wrong, retailers like Amazon, Overstock.com and Zappos will terminate California affiliates. Amazon has already notified California’s leadership in the state house that it will do so and has been terminating affiliates in North Carolina and Rhode Island when their legislatures pass similar bills. It’s safe to assume that will happen here as well.

That means a decrease in income tax revenue as we will generate less revenue. That will be compounded by our sites being less competitive and losing more sales thus more income tax revenue for the state. That will be compounded by layoffs, or at a minimum less hiring, which will result in both less income tax revenue and an increase in unemployment payments by the state.

NY collected $50 million after it passed the Amazon Tax last year

Maybe there was a first mover advantage. Amazon collected NY sales tax. It has clearly stated that it will not collect from any other states unless there is a national solution. That’s what the US Supreme Court stated in Quill v. North Dakota: Only the US Congress can force collection of sales tax where nexus does not exist.

I’ve heard rumors that Amazon accounts for 30% of that increase. Assuming that is correct for California, that’s $45 million that comes off the top before anything else happens. If you think $105 million is still a big number, what happens when other retailers terminate as well? It’s not looking so good, is it?

Why should you care about California

On this one, I think that as California goes, so goes the rest of the country. With the Silicon Valley here and companies like Google, Yahoo and eBay in opposition, you have no hopes of fighting this in your own state if if passes here.

What’s my solution?

This post has gotten too long so I am going to split it into 2. Please read the next one for my way to climb back through legislators’ loophole.

View original here:
Shopzilla as Our White Knight: CPC to replace commissions

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I just saw this come through:

Following Overstock.com’s announcement that it will pull its affiliate advertising from California due to the legislature’s proposal to increase taxes and the announcements of other companies such as Amazon.com threatening to follow suit, Governor Schwarzenegger today reiterated his deep commitment to not raising taxes to solve our state’s budget deficit and announced Overstock.com will reinstate California-based internet affiliate advertisers:

“After passing the largest tax increase in California history, it makes absolutely no sense to go back to the taxpayers to solve the current shortfall – that’s why yesterday I vetoed the majority vote tax increase passed by the legislature. With unemployment at an all time high, we should be doing everything we can to – keep jobs and create jobs – in California. That is why my Administration immediately contacted Overstock.com when we learned of this news and, I am pleased to announce Overstock.com has reversed its decision and will continue to do business with affiliates here in California. I will continue to fight to keep jobs and businesses in California.”

California lawmakers proposed a tax on affiliate advertising and sent legislation to the Governor, but as promised he vetoed it because we cannot solve our budget deficit by raising taxes and driving businesses out of the state.

Overstock.com estimates its internet affiliate advertisers in California create millions of dollars in revenue.

I applaud Govern Schwarzenegger and his staff for taking a stance in favor of small businesses and fairness. While this is a step in the right direction, we still face this serious issue in multiple states, including California.

Go here to see the original:
CA Breaking News: Schwarzenegger Opposes Tax Nexus Legislation

Search Engine Keywords:

• state of california tax nexus issues

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You’ve read about the bills changing the definition of nexus sweeping the nation and why they are wrong.

The simple truth is that they are based on a loophole left by the Supreme Court. In Quill v. North Dakota (1992), the Supreme Court ruled that only the US Congress can force companies without nexus in a state to collect sales tax for that state. The loophole was that having a salesperson in the state created nexus.

Who is a salesperson?

A smart lobbyist figured out that the states can expand the definition of a salesperson to include anyone who is paid commission for advertising on its site. They neglected to realize that this is advertising and can be cut off with the click of a mouse, just as Amazon has done in several states and promised to do in several more. That means no increase in sales tax revenue. The real equation is: AB178 = a decrease in income tax revenue + a decrease capital gains tax revenue + an increase in unemployment payments. In other words, it equals less revenue!

Let’s end the debate

Enough on what is constitutional or fair. Enough talking about how there is no revenue because affiliates will be terminated by the retailers or affiliates will move to other states. No one in state government is interested in that. They want another solution. (I’ve told them that doing nothing is a better solution. That resonates about as well as talking about a solution from Congress.)

My solution: Climb through the looking glass

My solution is climbing back through the same loophole the states are using. It’ll kill loyalty sites (including my own) but it will keep many more around and suck all of the revenue from bills like AB178.

Enter Shopzilla, our white knight

The Shopzilla Publisher Program is perfect for this. Not only does Shopzilla pay on a CPC basis, it has a quality filter to protect retailers. That means that any sites that have questionable practices or low-quality traffic, will be paid less or will not be able to survive.

Shopzilla is where you can find many of the stores who terminated NY affiliates. I did a quick search and here is the list that I found. I’m sure there are more but I wanted to get this out today. I think that any retailers who want to keep their affiliates in all 50 states should consider using Shopzilla. In addition, I am guessing that some of the other comparison shopping networks have similar programs to compensate publishers using CPC and systems to protect retailers against low-converting traffic. I’d also bet that the affiliate networks will join in with their own CPC compensation structures.

Sign up: Shopzilla Publisher Program.

The list

Here’s what I have so far:

Tirerack (CJ)

Conclusion

There is no revenue for the states to gain. In fact, there is only income tax and capital gains tax revenue to lose and increased unemployment payments.

State legislators, PLEASE STOP THE MADNESS! I know you are being promised a lot of money. Please talk to your constituents who are affiliates and find out the truth about these bills.

Read more:
The End of Affiliate Marketing or the Rebirth of CPC?

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Sign the petition

Before I start, I am going to ask that you sign the petition I started. It is all explained below. To sign, just tweet the following on Twitter:

petition @nmevans to Stop the #affiliatetax. Don’t hurt small biz in CA! http://act.ly/q retweet to sign

From the beginning… AB178

Brook Schaaf has a good write up on the California Affiliate Tax.

act.ly and my petition

My friend Clay Johnson told me about a new website, act.ly that launched this week. It is a brilliant idea. You can read the inspiration for it here. It is a service to post petitions that get signed when people retweet on Twitter. It requires that the person starting the petition select a single Twitter account to receive all of the votes.

I decided to give it a try. I found the account for Noreen Evans, the chair of the California Legislature’s Budget Conference Committee (or an account that appears to be hers). I hope that she reads the petition, the e-mails she is getting and this blog post. I hope that she sees that the bill, while well-intentioned, does not achieve it’s goals and will hurt some of California’s small businesses.

As you know, changes to the definition for nexus were proposed in February as AB178 by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner. She was unable to get the votes required to send the bill to the full Assembly so she tabled it (made it a so-called two-year bill which gave her until January, 2010 to get it through the Revenue and Tax Committee). There wasn’t a hearing on the bill. I know that because I received an e-mail telling me that the bill would not be heard as my cab pulled up to the state capital when I was going to testify.

It’s baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Things work differently in government than in business. The Budget Conference Committee spent the better part of a month working out the details of the budget. At 6pm on the last day of negotiations, a trailer bill was introduced with 9 provisions, one of which was AB178. There was little or no debate and no opportunity for public comment. It was passed along party lines.

Amazon says “NO!”

This week, Amazon sent a letter to state leaders letting them know that Amazon would terminate its California Associates (affiliates) should the definition of nexus change. Many other online retailers will follow suit and terminate affiliates.

Failure to achieve its goals

Lawmakers state 2 goals in AB178:

1. Increase the State’s revenue
2. Help brick-and-mortars

Should retailers terminate affiliates, neither goal will be achieved. Affiliates from other states and abroad will find ways to pick up the sales as those of us hurt by the bill see our userbases disappear and our revenues decline. That means that there may be a net decrease in revenue for the State.

Brick-and-mortar, if they have been hurt by stores such as Amazon not collecting sales/use tax, would see no benefit as Amazon will continue to not collect sales/use tax from Californians. So the B&Ms aren’t helped and businesses that use affiliate marketing are hurt.

Or are we?

I try to run my business in a way that is good for our store partners and our shoppers. I spend time looking for ways to build sites that add value, not looking for loopholes. Should this bill pass and we get terminated by the likes of Amazon and Overstock and others, there is a HUGE loophole that was created in the latest draft of the bill.

If we are terminated by stores for using commission-based compensation, why not switch to using links from comparison shopping engines? Of course, this solution works for some business models and not others. We can’t offer cash back from those links but we can maintain the relationships until we see some rationalization in the market.

Budget Vote Crisis

The state legislature voted on parts of the budget yesterday and did not pass them. The change in nexus for out-of-state retailers is in a separate trailer bill. So there is still time. Please sign the petition by tweeting the following:

Sign the petition!

petition @nmevans to Stop the #affiliatetax. Don’t hurt small biz in CA! http://act.ly/q retweet to sign

Source:
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A huge thank you to everyone who made it up to Sacramento for today’s lobbying efforts!

• Karen Garcia, My Co-Organizer, GTO Management
• Rebecca Madigan, Performance Marketing Alliance
• Rob Smahl, eBates (Rob has come to be recognized as our own “Great Communicator” for his knack with legislative staffers.)
  
• Lisa Picarille, Independent Consultant
• Alan Gray, NewsBlaze.com
• Ryan Owen, Savings.com
• Jennifer Arnold, Commission Junction
• Nicole Williams, Commission Junction

At the end of April we thought that we had killed California’s affiliate tax bill when AB 178 was moved to a two year bill. Unfortunately,  “nothing ever dies in Sacramento,” as they say. Last week the nexus language returned through the state budget committee, which included it in a grab bagof “acceleration provisions.” The new language, inspired by AB 178, reads:

Extends sales tax “nexus.” Requires out-of-state sellers, such as Amazon, that pay commissions to California firms or residents for sales referrals (often through a website link) to collect sales tax on their sales to California residents. This provision improves compliance, but does not change tax liability. Existing law requires Californians to pay equivalent use tax on these purchases, but compliance is low. Provisions reflect AB 178 (Skinner). The estimated General Fund revenue gain is $48 million in 2009-10 and $110 million annually, with additional revenue increases in local sales tax revenues.

This is being voted on this week but most people seemed to feel more negotiation will push thinks out at least until next week. Our goal today was to press our point on the negative economic consequences this legislation would have. We split into three groups and met with about 45 legislative staffers. We advanced the same main argument as before: this legislation will harm small businesses in California by discriminating against a specific type of advertising. New since last time were

• Commission Junction’s recorded 50% drop in New York publisher revenue, attributed to New York’s nexus law.
• Amazon’s pledge to sever relationships with California affiliates if the legislation passes.

The short of the long is that no one is sure where this is going to end up.  I think our argument on the damage to small businesses has started to penetrate and I personally felt better about this trip than the last time I was up. Governor Schwarzenegger has pledged to veto any tax increases. This may or may not count as a tax increase (as opposed to a collection effort) but we definitely have some allies who want to strike this language. Moreover, there are two other proposals, 711 and 469, that would bring in sales tax revenue without harming affiliates.

Earlier today Google Affiliate Network, Commission Junction, and LinkShare all dropped emails to their California affiliates. These efforts, along with all the Tweets, posts, and smaller email blasts, are VERY helpful to our cause. We definitely heard that we were making our presence known. If you are a California affiliate and you have not yet written your representative regarding this issue, please do so ASAP. We are having an impact and we have a realistic chance to derail this destructive measure. Huge props to everyone doing their part.

Read the original:
California Anti-Nexus Lobby Day 3

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The rest is here:
Can you pick the winning A/B test?

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According to Mark Penn’s article in the Wall St. Journal, there are over 20 million bloggers out there, and according to a recent Technorati poll, 2% of them are making a living through blogging.  That’s more than 400k people!  The article goes on to discuss how the Technorati poll suggests it takes approximately 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate $75k / year in income.

“Technorati report says that of those bloggers who had 100,000 or more unique visitors, the average income is $75,000″

1% of American adults are generating some income through blogging, and that number is increasing daily.

The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That’s almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click — whether on their site or someone else’s.

I am not sure exacly where Penn get’s his figures about $75k being the target for “making a living”.  I guess that all depends on where you live and what your cost of living is?  I wonder if we will see a trend of people with these types of jobs moving to places with very low costs of living?  It’s a job that could be done anywhere in the world!

See the original post:
Do you make $75k / Year Blogging?

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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!

More here:
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There’s a new affiliate on the prowl, and it means serious business – at least for itself. TweetBucks has come up with a great business model to leverage Twitter to make itself money. Marketers who use TweetBucks “make 70% of the affiliate commissions every time a click on your shortened link results in a sale” (quoted from the TweetBucks site). If you use their ad system, you also get a cut of the CPM from the ads, too.

Who’s the winner here? TweetBucks, definitely. Let’s do some simple math with the following simplified assumptions.

• 1 million users
• Average affiliate product price $20
• Affiliate fee 10%
• 1 Unit sales per affiliate per month

Under these simplistic numbers, the cash flow would look like:

• $20M total sales/month
• $2 M affiliate revenue/month

Applying TweetBuck’s 30%, yields Tweetbucks $600,000/month.

I’m hoping someone who has used the service will comment and include more details from a user perspective. At first glance it looks like a great model for TweetBucks. That 30% comes from TweetBucks being a “super affiliate” where they sign-on as affiliates for all the products and issue revenue checks based on everyone using their affiliate links.

Why wouldn’t you instead sign up as an affiliate and get your 100%? Well that’s the beauty of their system. They do the work for you – signing up for all the affiliate programs, providing the link shortener/converter, and you don’t need a website or need to update your HTML or optimize your affiliate products. It’s a decent tradeoff if you don’t already have a system to use your affiliate links on Twitter.

So if you want to try affiliate marketing and have a user base, TweetBucks may be an easy way to get started with some potential for supplemental income.

With TweetBucks, Twitter again shows that it has potential for business, but like all business uses of Twitter, it has serious potential to generate spam and annoy the users that depend on it for relevant and timely information. It will be curious to see if TweetBucks can provide a real value to businesses through the affiliate channel or if it will becomes an automated weapon of Twitter spam and a bane to normal Twitter users.

Read the original post:
TweetBucks: Good for business or good for Twitter abuse?

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From the staff, designers, authors and contributors here at Revenews to all those who served our country over the years and to those who still serve today and their families: a heartfelt thank you.

Korean War Memorial Atlantic City. Picture By Ron Miguel RN.

Originally posted here:
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Last week I referenced pet goods purveyor, Drs. Foster Smith and their very strategic, long-term approach to using video to drive sales — on the Web, via telemarketing and through their catalog channels.  Today I’m going deeper to understand exactly how that works.  Again, my focus is on cost-justyfing the use of video and understanding how it’s measured as a tactic.  I want to know how Gordon MaGee, who runs this side of the business, knows this stuff actually works and how he convinced The Powers above to fund (and continue funding!) such a large investment in Web publishing (you can call it social media if you want).

How heavily invested in video is the company?  They produce (themselves, 100% internally) and distribute video across the Web at e-commerce focused DrsFosterSmith.com and content-focused PetEducation.com and LiveAquaria.com.  But that’s not all.  The company even attracted the interest of Animal Planet which now distributes its Faithful Friends cable TV program.  The scope here is significant and capital outlay breathtaking.  They make for a perfect video-based social media case study.

First I asked Gordon — a former rock band member, iron worker and pastor — for his best advice to those starting out using video.

Gordon Magee: One of the things that I would say about online video is — for medium to large sized companies and to a certain extent even smaller companies — it’s critical for the company to recognize that as soon as they put videos on their website or park them on YouTube or whatever they are competing with everybody else who’s got a video out there… in terms of the quality of the video.

Early on — and I’ve seen many of these videos that companies are doing or people with a smaller business are trying to do — they get a reasonable camera… they go out and shoot a video.  They’re not doing any lighting… they’re not doing any sound balance… they’re not adding any graphics to speak of and they think by getting their name out there with that kind of video it’s going to be a plus.  In the long run that turns out to be a huge minus.

So videos need to be done super, super-well and they need to differentiate the company from other companies. And that’s what we’re looking to do.

For us, for example, that’s why we decided to invest in our own studio… and then by the end of the year, we expect to have 120 to 200 plus product videos and then maybe another 20 ‘how-to’ videos.

Jeff, these will all be shot in HD. We’ve got professional editing equipment, professional sound equipment and so on, so that the videos will be very, very high quality from day one. We will certainly learn more about how to do them well, but you want to shoot with the highest quality you can, have your scripting done properly, go with storyboards so you know precisely what you’re going to do, so you’re not just standing up in front of a camera and winging it. That will not work.

Humph.  It seems to me that much of this flies in the face of what most social media gurus tell us — that it’s easy, low-cost and high impact.  Just jump in and jump in now!  In fact Barry Silverstein just summarized research from Michael Stelzner that seems rather contentious to Gordon’s advice. (he says as he stirs the pot)

So wait a minute.  Here’s someone giving his “best advice” on social media (ok, so it’s reserved to video) and he’s telling us it’s actual work and requires polish, professionalism and planning.  Hmm…

I continued to ask Gordon how it was that the company got involved in video at all… how it started.

Gordon Magee: When the company started 25 years ago… we were owned by two veterinarians, Dr. Ray Foster and Dr. Marty Smith. When the company started one of the things they wanted to do was educate pet owners to be able to use products better and to care well for their pet. That came out of their veterinary background.

Certainly that’s a good marketing strategy as well. But the primary thing was let’s make sure pet owners know what they are doing. They can make better buying decisions and so on.

When they started their catalog they went to catalog conferences. They were new at all this. The catalog experts said, ‘You know you guys are devoting way too much space to education in your catalog. You can’t do that on a square inch analysis basis and have it come out in a cost-effective way.’

They decided very early on to ignore that advice. They dedicated I think 10 to 15 percent of every catalog to educational articles. That really became our niche for the customer. It also provided a good marketing tool in that people kept the catalogs because the articles were in them.

Over time, that trust relationship developed with the customer. So we probably have more articles on pet care and more veterinary articles online than anybody in the country. So to go into video and do the same thing was just a natural outgrowth of what we have been doing for 25 years really.

So now things started getting clearer for me — this was more of a cultural thing.  The company was really committed to production of high quality, educational content from the start.  They believe, at the core, in the use of content to a) drive sales and b) enhance brand loyalty.  The Web just offers a means to extend.  In fact, any new media does so long as it has a following and so long as it can be tracked using direct response tactics.

Next up I ask Gordon about user generated content and his use of that — video content supplied by customers.  You may find his answer rather surprising.  I also pushed Gordon on the issue of metrics and measurement to try and understand his use of them.  More importantly, I wanted to understand how he knew that what he was investing in was actually paying off.

More here:
Case Study: Using Video Publishing to Drive Sales

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