Advertising

PortableApps Saves My Bacon

Make Money with Adsense - Thu, 2009-04-30 23:05

This post is a big, public “thank you” to the folks behind PortableApps, a suite of open-source software (including Firefox and Thunderbird) that have been modified for use on removable media.

As you know, my HP notebook recently became unusable due to a motherboard problem. The data on the drives was fine, though, so I purchased a couple of external 2.5 inch hard drive enclosures to hold the notebook’s hard drives. I installed the PortableApps suite on the main drive and moved my Thunderbird profile over to the PortableApps installation directory. Started up the PortableApps version of Thunderbird and was able to access all my mail and everything. Whew! I had backups, but this lets me use the latest and greatest stuff without changing anything.

Now I can take my drive to any computer, plug it into the host computer’s USB port, run the PortableApps console and access my email. A nice, simple solution while I figure it what to do to replace my laptop.

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Google Updates AdSense Program Policies

Make Money with Adsense - Wed, 2009-04-29 15:49

Google just announced a series of changes to the AdSense program policies. Some of the changes are cosmetic — they cleaned up the policy page to make it easier to find information about what’s acceptable or not acceptable. They also clarified some of the vagueness around encouraging clicks and such — read the Inside AdSense article for the details.

If you wonder why this is important, it’s because the AdSense program policies are officially part of the AdSense terms and conditions. They’re not “unofficial policies” or “recommendations”, they’re real rules that AdSense publishers have to follow. (If you don’t believe me, read the first section of the terms and conditions.) It’s important for AdSense publishers to keep up-to-date with changes to the program policies.

Meanwhile, I’m doing my taxes (grrr) and am trying to figure out how to go forward with my broken laptop. I’ve pulled the two hard drives from the laptop and purchased some hard drive enclosures so I can access them as external drives, but it’s an imperfect solution because that just gives me access to the data, not the apps. I think I’ll consolidate everything onto a single external drive and install PortableApps so I can run Firefox, FileZilla, Thunderbird, and a few other useful things directly from the external drive. This will save me from having to reinstall the world when forced to switch devices.

I’m so disappointed that my HP notebook died, though. I didn’t cheap out, I bought a developer-class 64-bit laptop running Vista Ultimate so I could use NetBeans, Eclipse, and all the other tools a good developer uses. Also on my laptop was the Finale software I use for music notation, along with the drivers and software needed to record my piano playing and singing, which means it’s been impossible to update my new site since then.

One of the commenters suggested I go for a cheap netbook, but I need a machine with good horsepower for programming. What a pain… losing a hard drive would have been simpler, because then I’d have a backup to work from. Losing the entire computer because of a faulty graphics chip is incredibly frustrating… And, of course, my model of notebook is not listed on the special HP limited warranty extension page. Somehow, I doubt I’ll be replacing my notebook with another HP, which is too bad for HP — I was happy with the notebook up until this incident.

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links for 2009-04-25

Marketing Technology - Sat, 2009-04-25 22:01


Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

My Engagement Announcement

Marketing Technology - Sat, 2009-04-25 01:56

If I talk to my girlfriend 83% more this month than last month, am I more engaged? How about if I made a few comments about her? Am I engaged?

No.

I wish marketers would quit expressing the term engagement as time measured on the page, number of comments, number of followers, number of votes, or even the number of minutes of video watched.

That’s not engagement, that’s dating.

Dating is any social activity undertaken by, typically, two people with the aim of each assessing the other’s suitability as their partner.

If your visitors are spending more time on your site, congratulations! You’re dating more and it’s a good sign… but it’s not an engagement. When your visitor buys the ring and puts it on your finger, tell me that you’re engaged. When the number of those visitors increases and they purchase more off your website, then you can tell me that your engagement is increasing.

Marketers who can’t measure return on investment with social media use terms like engagement to legitimize their efforts and wow their clients… while wasting their money.

When Jeffrey Glueck did the opening speech at the eMarketing Association Conference this week, he told a great story of Travelocity starting up social media campaign using the gnome and MySpace.

By social media standards, the campaign was a huge success… everyone befriended the gnome and comments and conversations flew! People spent more time on the page and there was a ton of exposure. Unfortunately, though, the campaign cost $300k and was a failure at driving business to Travelocity. In other words… no engagement.

PS: On a side note… I don’t really have a girlfriend.

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Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

links for 2009-04-24

Marketing Technology - Fri, 2009-04-24 22:03


Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

HUGE PROFITS… Secrets Revealed Now!

Marketing Technology - Fri, 2009-04-24 01:25

No, my site was not attacked by a spammer. This is still Doug writing this post and I’m doing it under my own free will.

Have you ever hit a web page that advertises that they’re going to reveal all the secrets of the problems you’re looking to solve? The page starts with some incredibly written, formulaic text that sucks you in, bold images, compelling testimonials… pulling you down the page until you are magically lifting your credit card from your pocket.

When I worked in the direct mail business, I watched Pat Coyle craft long copy letters that achieved incredible response rates. I believe friend and copywriter Erik Deckers is a fan and writer of long copy as well. Regardless of the actual product, the talent of these writers is incredible… you’re almost hypnotized by the end of the letter.

For some marketers, this kind of copy writing is repulsive and, at times, they believe it to be deceitful. I can’t say that I agree. I can easily recognize it when I see it, but sometimes it’s hard to turn away. I’ve downloaded (and paid) for a couple of ebooks in my time - and I believe I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

Many of these folks are information marketers, wheeling and dealing in ebooks, webinars and conferences. They open up with some free taste that sucks you in and can cost you tens of thousands of dollars by the time you’ve left their conference.

Cost is relative, though… if you’ve got the promotional talent of these folks and you’re willing to put everything you have into it… you can make a lot of money. As I view the readership of my blog and sites, I could be giving up a lot of money by not following in Joel’s footsteps and becoming an information marketer myself.

Most people associate being an Internet Millionaire with the dot-com craze of the late 1990’s… But a small band of Internet Marketing Pioneers were quietly making their fortunes online before anyone Yahoo’d or Googled the term “making money online”. Many of them built their empires around four simple but extremely powerful words… Click HERE to Order.

Joel Comm’s New York Times Best Seller, Click HERE to Order, is not a marketing script or a book on how to become a millionaire. Instead, it’s a fascinating look at the earliest history of the Internet and the folks who first profited there - some of them you’ve never heard of. As Mark Joyner states, “Here is a small group of people who, at the beginning of a technological revolution, saw opportunity and grabbed it.”

There are Internet Marketers and Internet Marketers. I know they sound the same, but often one group looks at the other like a private school kid snarling at someone from public school. In this case, though, it’s often the public school kid that wins… moving huge profits in nontraditional ways. It almost sounds as though it’s not on the up and up… but the engagement is all voluntary and it’s quite a large industry.

I don’t look down at these Internet Marketers at all. Let’s take a look at history and, for example, compare Corey Rudl (RIP) to Pets.com, it’s clear who had the staying power and the talent. It’s also clear who wasted their money and squandered their revenue. I’m quite in awe of these entrepreneurs’ talents at growing incredible businesses, cross-converting traffic to one another (rather than compete), mentoring and educating each other on what works and flawlessly utilizing every tool at their disposal to test and produce copy that converts.

I’m not a Marketing purist who scoffs at these entrepreneurs, I think their tenacity and stories are fascinating. Joel’s book is story after story of some of the most successful of internet marketers. Stories of guys staying up all night mastering their craft, falling asleep at work, getting fired and then becoming millionaires are great inspiration for any entrepreneur. Reading the stories gets your blood pumping! The average CMO or Director of Marketing could learn a lot from this group.

On Tuesday night I finished Super Crunchers on the plane to San Francisco and I finished Click HERE to Order this morning on the flight back - all 279 pages. It’s a great read - be sure to pick it up when you get a chance.

I even feel an ebook in my near future!

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Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

links for 2009-04-22

Marketing Technology - Wed, 2009-04-22 22:02


Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

AdSense CPA Peformance Trends

Make Money with Adsense - Wed, 2009-04-22 17:44

If you feel I’ve been neglecting you, it’s because my HP laptop is officially on the fritz due to a motherboard problem that many others have encountered. My life as an Internet marketer is on that laptop, so it makes it hard to do some things. The data’s fine, but it’s hard to use it without a computer. Still trying to decide what to do to move forward. I hope HP will repair it for free, but that will take a few weeks and what do I do in the meantime? What a pain.

Anyhow, earlier this week Google released an interesting whitepaper called CPA Performance on the Google Content Network, which I suggest you read when you have the time.

The term “CPA” refers to cost-per-acquisition, which is advertising speak for the price you pay to acquire a customer lead or sale. (It depends on what you’re targeting.) It’s a broader term than “CPC”, which is cost-per-click. CPA measures the cost of obtaining traffic and converting that traffic into customers and/or sales.

Because AdWords advertisers can optionally allow Google to track how well ad clicks convert into sales or leads (by inserting special tracking code that Google generates onto their landing pages), Google was able to crunch the numbers to see how well ads clicked on the content network (AdSense publishers like you and I) fared versus ads clicked on the search network (ads shown on Google-generated search result pages).

The main conclusion is that, on the whole, advertisers pay less per-conversion for ads shown on the content network versus the search network, but it’s not really much less, only 2.6% less. Does this mean that advertisers are paying almost the same per click on the content network? No. The really interesting part of the whitepaper from our perspective as AdSense publishers is this fragment:

… for the median advertiser, Content Network clicks are on average over 28% cheaper than search network clicks. This lowered cost is partially a result of smart pricing, which automatically reduces maximum CPC bids for certain pages in the Content Network based on their likelihood of driving actionable business results.

I would love to see the cost differentials between content and search described in more detail on a broad niche level, I’m sure that there are some niches where the difference is much more than 28%. Proper niche selection can make such a huge difference in this game. What we need is a formula that takes into account the CPC published in the AdWords Keyword Tool, which is for the search network and returns the likely equivalent CPC for the content network.

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Analytical + Creative = Social Media Success

Marketing Technology - Tue, 2009-04-21 03:14

What are the characteristics that drive success in social media? As we continue to grow at work, we’re looking for talent and need the right mix.

My son is an honors math student… and a musician. My daughter is a singer… and a math wiz. I’m very analytical… but love being creative in my writing and design. Music is definitely a key to success for both my son and daughter. I’m not a musician, but the creative hobbies I work on have helped my success. I believe practicing creativity outside your job helps when analyzing and problem-solving in your job - an ultimately leads to your success.

I don’t think of myself as an expert in Social Media but I have had enough experience in it to help guide companies through the mine field and help them leverage the mediums involved. Almost every day I’m working on blog posts, presentations, speeches, email designs and web designs. Each of these are a creative outlet for me.

If I were to chart my time, it’s ~50% creative and ~50% strategic/analytical. I’m not sure that I could be as creative in the solutions I work on with clients and co-workers if I didn’t have some sort of outlet that required me to practice on a daily basis. I’m thankful that I’m constantly challenged to come up with creative solution - whether it’s a user interface design or the words to an entertaining blog post.

As I look to many of my friends in the business who are successful, they have similar outlets of creativity. Many of them do both development and graphical design. Some are musicians and others are photographers. Quite a few are athletes… but not simple athletes, they’re white water rafters, adventure racers or marathon runners. I can’t imagine the creativity it requires to enable your body to push through those challenges.

I’m always amazed to hear what my friends do outside their job. A lot of folks don’t distinguish between the creative side of my job and the analytical, but it’s definitely something I’ve been able to tap into. I know when I’m using solutions from each type of thinking to help solve the other and I have to do it very often. It takes constant practice and fine-tuning.

99% of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of. Seth Godin

I’d love for readers of this post to share their creative side and either blog or comment on how it successfully impacts the ability to execute their job responsibilities. Please share!

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Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

links for 2009-04-20

Marketing Technology - Mon, 2009-04-20 22:04


Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

eMarketing Association Conference Tomorrow

Marketing Technology - Mon, 2009-04-20 16:51

Chris Baggott was unavailable so I’m jumping out to San Francisco tomorrow to speak at the eMarketing Association Conference. From the site:

eM9-SF provides the forum for the very latest trends, best practices, processes and ideas that are transforming the future of marketing. Sessions contain new content and cutting edge actionable ideas and processes you can bring your entire team.

Enjoy a relaxed atmosphere, great networking, welcome reception, terrific breaks, and some of the best leaders in the marketing arena.

I’ll be speaking Wednesday on Why Blogs are your #1 Search Marketing Tool. If you’re in San Francisco and want to meet up for coffee, stop by the Hilton (twitter @douglaskarr). I’m not sure I’ll have any time on my hands, but would love to meet you.

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Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres

Marketing Technology - Mon, 2009-04-20 01:18

Regular readers of my blog know that I’ve always been an advocate of measurement. A career in database marketing opened my eyes to the power of data and its ability to accurately assist marketing efforts. Attending the Webtrends Engage 2009 Conference was quite an inspiration and has really put me on a crusade to ensure companies measure and analyze their online marketing strategies.

Webtrends invited Ian Ayres to speak about his book, Super Crunchers. I received an autographed book at the event and began reading it on the airplane. I’ve had a hard time putting it down since!

I think the entire theme of the book may be summed up in a single sentence:

We see the struggle of intuition, personal experience, and philosophical inclination waging war against the brute force of numbers.

Ayres provides colorful examples from across the spectrum in medicine, government, education, the movie industry… and even wine selection… to support crunching the numbers. All the examples support the premise that data collection and comprehensive analysis (with some special attention to regression analysis) can provide us with the knowledge to improve and even predict business results.

Even if you’re not a fan of analysis, this is a great book for any businessman or marketer to pick up.

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Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

links for 2009-04-19

Marketing Technology - Sun, 2009-04-19 22:02


Categories: Advertising, Blogs, Marketing

AdSense Competitive Ad Filter Size Increase

Make Money with Adsense - Wed, 2009-04-15 19:52

Catching up on some AdSense news, been pretty busy lately. The big news that will make some publishers very happy is that Google has increased the number of URLs you can add to the competitive ad filter from 200 to 500.

The AdSense competitive ad filter lets AdSense publishers exclude specific ads from appearing on their content sites. This exclusion is done by URL only, which some publishers think is too limiting. The URLs you enter into your filter are matched against the display and destination URLs of the AdWords ads that are to be displayed on your sites. Any ads whose URLs match one of the entries in your filter are not displayed on those sites.

The primary purpose of the competitive ad filter is to prevent direct competitors from bidding for advertising space on your sites. If your primary business is selling widgets and you have a blog about widgets, you typically don’t want someone else advertising widgets on that blog. The filter is the only tool you have to reject those ads.

A secondary purpose is to block inexpensive ads for “MFA” (made-for-AdSense) sites from appearing on your sites. This was a big deal a couple of years ago, but I don’t see many people talking about that now. Google did crack down on using AdSense arbitrage as a way of generating traffic to AdSense sites. (You can still do it, but only using carefully-targeted ads that directly relate to the content of your landing page.)

The ad filter is a manually-intensive process — you have to figure out which URLs you don’t want yourself, often only be looking at the ads you see on the site — and it’s not something that most AdSense publishers should worry about, but it’s there if you’re having some problems.

Unrelated note: My new blog, I’m Not In Marketing, premiered yesterday. If you’re a techie, check it out!

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Into Your Hands - New Music Site

Make Money with Adsense - Mon, 2009-04-13 13:45

And now, as Monty Python says, for something different… my grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago and it inspired me to finally go ahead with a project I’d been thinking about for many years now. The result is Into Your Hands, a showcase of sacred and spiritual music written by yours truly. I have a backlog of almost 20 years of material to work with, so content’s not a problem, but it’ll take some time to fill the site.

I hope some of you will find it useful and enjoyable.

Free Keyword Tool For Subscribers Only: Download SuperSuggester 1.0.0 today. It runs on Windows, Macintosh (OS 10.4 or higher) or Linux computers!

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Take the Twitter Pledge

Make Money with Adsense - Sat, 2009-04-11 17:53

Twitter is a neat platform for sharing ideas and news, but it’s being overwhelmed by personal nonsense and marketing pitches. If you’re a Twitter user, you can help the situation by taking The Twitter Pledge:

“I pledge to only write informative or funny tweets and to refrain from posting irrelevant personal details.”

Read how you can help banish inanity from Twitter by taking the pledge and keep it a useful tool for public discourse.

Free Keyword Tool For Subscribers Only: Download SuperSuggester 1.0.0 today. It runs on Windows, Macintosh (OS 10.4 or higher) or Linux computers!

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Google AdSense and Google Analytics Integration Guide

Make Money with Adsense - Wed, 2009-04-01 18:32

Google Analytics is a free service that lets you gather and analyze website traffic statistics. Answers to questions like Where does most of my traffic come from?, Which keywords are generating the most traffic? and How long do visitors stay on my site? can be answered using Google Analytics.

Not that long ago, Google allowed you to link your AdSense account with your Analytics account. (Note that you can only link single accounts together. If you have multiple AdSense accounts, you’ll need to create multiple Analytics accounts.) You can do this right from your AdSense management console — it’s very simple to link the two accounts. (See here for more details.)

Assuming you’ve added the Analytics tracking code (see here) to your AdSense pages, you should see AdSense earnings appear in your statistics within a day or so. Here are some sample stats:

The great thing about these stats is that you can do page-by-page earnings analysis without having to create separate AdSense channels for each page. This is especially useful if you have more than 200 pages of content, since you’re limited to 200 channels per AdSense account.

If you have multiple sites, though, there’s an extra step you need to take to do a proper integration. AdSense earnings are only collected for the primary domain in your Analytics account. If you don’t see a section labeled “AdSense Performance” in the per-page stats then you know AdSense data isn’t being collected:

Why can’t you see the AdSense earnings for this site? The likely cause is that you forgot to include the AdSense Analytics Code (ASAC) at the top of each page that displays AdSense ads. The ASAC is a small bit of JavaScript that should be inserted into a page immediately after the <body> tag and before any AdSense code:

<script> window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-99999-3"; </script>

Replace the tracking ID above with the ID for your site — you’ll find it in your Analytics account by clicking on “Analytics Settings” to access the account overview page. Do this for each site you want to track.

That’s all you need to do to integrate your AdSense earnings into your Analytics account. Give it a few days to collect some information and start your analysis!

Free Keyword Tool For Subscribers Only: Download SuperSuggester 1.0.0 today. It runs on Windows, Macintosh (OS 10.4 or higher) or Linux computers!

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Google In Talks To Buy General Motors

Make Money with Adsense - Wed, 2009-04-01 14:07

In a surprising turn of events, Google today revealed that the search giant is in talks to buy majority control of beleaguered auto manufacturer General Motors, which it plans to rename Google Motors.

“It’s become clear to all of us at Google that the auto industry is a major driver of the economy and that we simply can’t afford to let General Motors fail,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “If GM disappears, so will many jobs, and that will ultimately affect Google quite negatively. We make our money from advertising, after all, and if the auto industry tanks then it’s going to reduce our profits. We’re not just being altruistic, we also want Google to continue to thrive. We need a stable, growing economy for that to happen.”

Google also sees this as an opportunity to transform the culture at General Motors to benefit the environment. “We’ve always been on the leading edge of the green curve,” continued Schmidt, “and we’re going to use this opportunity to push GM into the twenty-first century and bring affordable and workable green technology to the fore.”

“Let’s face it, we have a lot of smart people at Google whose talents are currently being wasted. Instead of figuring out how to tweak AdSense ads to make us more money, these bored PhDs can tackle more important problems.”

When asked if Google’s advertising model could be extended to the automobile sector, Schmidt was evasive. “There are some synergies there that we plan to explore, for sure,” he said, “but we can’t discuss those details publicly as of yet.”

The transaction is expected to close within the month.

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AdSense Video Units Are Dead

Make Money with Adsense - Mon, 2009-03-30 19:32

My grandmother died last week (not unexpectedly) and while I’m still sorting through the event and will have something to say about it later, I thought I’d discuss some recent AdSense news.

The big news is that AdSense video units are being discontinued at the end of next month (April 2009). Google refers to it as “sunsetting”, I refer to it as “good riddance”.

The problem I always had with the video units was the lack of inventory. I could never find videos that related to the keywords I wanted.

The success of the AdSense program has ultimately been its ability to automatically match relevant advertising to content. Google has been able to do this by tapping into the sheer breadth of search-related advertising available via its AdWords program. They haven’t been able to replicate that breadth with the video units, hence the poor returns for them and for AdSense publishers. (Google had also had to discard similar forays into radio and print advertising for similar reasons — they haven’t been able to replicate their success with text ads with other kinds of advertisements.)

I don’t think many AdSense publishers will miss video units. Everyone I talk to is primarily using the same basic ad units that have been around since the start of the AdSense program. Personally, I still get a steady stream of hits on my original AdSense Tips page and those tips are still relevant today, four or five years after I wrote the first four of them! (If you want 40 more detailed and useful AdSense tips, check out my inexpensive Uncommon AdSense book. You also get a free copy of my analysis of Google’s AdSense patent when you buy it.)

There are a lot of smart people at Google, but they still haven’t come up with anything that comes even near to matching the success of the original AdWords and AdSense concepts as a money-maker for Google. And perhaps never will…

Free Keyword Tool For Subscribers Only: Download SuperSuggester 1.0.0 today. It runs on Windows, Macintosh (OS 10.4 or higher) or Linux computers!

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Eric’s Google AdSense Tips For $10

Make Money with Adsense - Fri, 2009-03-27 14:10

Doing a bit of housecleaning… if you’re looking for a comprehensive set of AdSense tips, techniques and strategies, you can now purchase my Uncommon AdSense ebook for only $10. And as bonus you get my special report on understanding the AdSense patent. Over 100 pages of useful information for only $10, a real steal!

Visit UncommonAdSense.com today and order your copy now before I change my mind!

Free Keyword Tool For Subscribers Only: Download SuperSuggester 1.0.0 today. It runs on Windows, Macintosh (OS 10.4 or higher) or Linux computers!

Free Special Report For Subscribers Only: Learn How To Make $5000/Month With Simple Membership Sites.
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