October 2005 - Posts
AREW means "A Relatively Empty Website" - and chances are pretty darn good that you may have experienced it, if are not actively experiencing it right this very moment. The symptoms include (but are not limited to) high stress, self doubt, and in some instances self-loathing. Cases of AREW are more severe with community based websites such as forums. Yes, even our own Website Services Magazine forum has a slight case of the AREW - but not to worry - we're expecting all of our subscribers to actively participate in the forum once the inagural issue is released. Meanwhile, we've seeded the forum with our articles and encourage readers to post their comments and discuss the articles with other subscribers.
What's the cure to AREW? Participation.
So visit, join and participate today in the WSM forum!
You are selling a product no one else has ever thought of, you have a
million dollar website with all the bells and whistles, and a rock
solid marketing campaign to boot. Then, out of the blue, your very wise
intern asks you how you are going to handle payment processing. Foiled
again? Not just yet. Read "
Handling the Need for Merchant Accounts"
In a warm-up for Ad:Tech, WSM had an opportunity talk with future New
York Ad:Tech attendee Joel Skretvedt, Marketing Manager of
CYMedia Group,
a Richmond, VA based online marketing provider catering to local
markets. Joel has quite of bit of valuable information and some unique
perspectives on how small businesses can penetrate local markets on the
Web and of course we picked his brain a little. CYMedia Group's client
roster is diverse when it comes to vertical niches, but caters
primarily to local retail storefronts that already have a Web presence.
"The sites that come to us are usually looking to take the next step,"
said Skretvedt. CYMedia tends to focus on providing exposure to clients
on a local level. Skretvedt said that he's seen better results (when it
comes to mediay buying on a local level) from Yahoo! Local although he
also uses Google Adwords geo-targeting to get clients closer to
prospects in their area. (Read WSM's brief "
Comparing the Big Three Local Search Products")
By attending Ad:Tech, Skretvedt can learn from industry experts in the
advertising and marketing communiations industry by sitting in on
seminars about everything from "Creating and Distributing a Corporate
Blog" to a session on "The Internet According to Kids and the 21st
Century Woman" - three days of jam packed Internet goodness.
WSM will be releasing its inaugural issue at the Ad:Tech show in New
York on November 7th. WSM Managing Editor Pete Prestipino will be
blogging about the event and reporting live during seminars about
what's really important for website owners. Not signed up for Ad:tech?
Do so at
www.Ad-Tech.com.
An interesting post by Adam Veiner of Corante titled "
Are Content Networks and Affiliate Networks Symbiotic."
What Veiner is engaged in is a practice called "Bouncing" or "Traffic Bouncing"
- a perfectly legitimate means to generate additional revenue from a site in
addition to what the site itself is producing from existing affiliate program
relationships. Bouncing entails paying for visitors from a PPC network (in this
case Google Adwords) to promote an affiliate program and then using
strategically placed content ads in the hopes of garnering additional clicks and
in turn revenue - literally bouncing visitors around until they find what they
want via affiliate sites. Perfectly ethical method but one would have to
question of the approach of using arguably the most expensive PPC network
(Adwords) to bounce traffic. Another option may be to utilize second tier
networks such as Miva, 7Search, Search123 or Enhance to drive traffic as the
cost per visitor is exponentially lower which could result in an even higher
return on investment if done correctly. A great post by Veiner and a viable
online business approach (promoting affiliate programs through PPC and profiting
from both the affiliate program and the content ads).
Curing the Ills of Lazy Users
You've seen it in your server logs, the handful of visitors that spend hours on one page. They are not trying to annoy you, they may just have stepped away from their computer or decided to take a little nap at their desk. Read the WSM brief on using meta-refresh and meta-redirects to keep those users on their toes.
According to an article in AdAge, Fathom Online's monthly keyword price iindex revealed that prices in the consumer services industry (education, fitness and entertainment) increased a whopping 78% in the past twelve months. According to the AdAge article, Grett Stewart of Fathom cited one possible reason for the increased demand for search is that brand marketers have flcoked online to use search for branding campaigns. Stewart added that "the best advertisers are moving toward conversion optimization or creating a a page where the consumer lands that features the exact product or service mentioned in the search ad copy.
LEARN MORE: WSM has produced a brief on developing landing pages that sell.
More Americans are now looking forward to spending more money this holiday season online than last, according to MyPoints.com, a premier frequent shopping website. According to its recent survey of over 1,000 of its members, MyPoints.com predicts that Q4 online spending will be up in 2005, with more than half of those polled planning to do 54% or more of their holiday shopping online this season. Coupled with a just-released survey by the National Retail Federation (NRF), which predicts overall holiday retail sales will increase 5.0 percent over last year to $435.3 billion, retailers could experience dramatic gains.
The more visitors that navigate to your Web pages the more valuable each and every pixel becomes. If you wanted to advertise on a site that gets 500,000 unique visitors a month, you very well may end up paying thousands of dollars per month for the smallest advertisement available. Relief, for some, may come in the form of pixels.
The past few months has seen an influx in the number of websites established solely for the purpose of selling their online pixel “real estate” to advertisers. The idea for this immensely creative approach to ad sales came from Alex Tew of Wiltshire, England. Alex’s MillionDollarHomepage.com created a good deal of buzz in both the offline and online media and he’s earned well over $500,000 in a few short months for just selling the pixels of his site. Selling ad space in this manner is indeed a novel approach; but it is also an increasingly popular way.
Take for example RadioPixels.com, which sells pixel ads to participating musicians so they can showcase themselves and submit a song to be featured within their ad space, which in turn links to a customized web page. Those musicians who are paying for the ads can generate some attention and their music can be purchased by listeners of the artist, who receives royalties on each download.
How much are your pixels worth?
Developing a formula for monetizing on online pixel real estate is difficult. If you have the tools available to sell pixel advertising, creative ideas like that of RadioPixels.com and a knack for driving website traffic (or an established user base) then pixel ads may be for you.
Tags: Pixel Ads | Pixel Advertising
One of the most popular blogging networks in Blogger.com has been overrun of late with Blog Spam or Splogs. Apparently, automated programs are being utilized to artificially seed blogger.com weblogs with the sole intent of promoting affiliated websites, increasing the number of links as well as ad impressions. It's become a major problem namely because it's forcing poor search results and wasting disk space and bandwidth of blogger. So what is the owner of Blogger (Google) doing about it? Most recently, they have implemented Captcha, a type of challenge-response test used in computing in order to determine whether or not the user is human. You may have seen Captcha at work when trying to log in to secure websites. The most common type include the distortion of letters or a sequence of letters. Sometimes referred to as a reverse turing test, Captchas are used to prevent bots from using various types of services such as free email accounts. If your website has been the victim of automated scripts wreaking havoc visit one of the following sites to learn more about Captchas:
The Captcha Project
The JCaptcha Project - open-source Java framework for Captcha integration
VeriWord - a PHP implementation
Captchas.net - free Captcha Service (image and audio)
Thousand of website visitors streaming to your site for free!
Come join us for free! It costs nothing - get more sales in record time for free!
Traffic exchanges are a popular Internet marketing method where websites "exchange" web traffic. Here is how it works. Sign up at sites such as TrafficSwarm.com, surf member websites and in exchange other members will visit your site. Sounds great, right? While it may seem as though there are infinite benefits, it may just be one big giant slight of hand marketing show that benefits no one in particular at all except those running the traffic exchange network.
All websites on day one experience the exact same problem: how to get visitors to your online property. Visitors are needed quickly and for the lowest cost possible. Traffic exchanges can indeed provide traffic, but the question is not so much quantity as it is quality. As most exchange programs utilize a specific credit ratio (2:1, 3:1 or 4:1) you have to spend a significant amount of time surfing others companies websites in order to get just a few visits from the other members. The problem is that you (like the other traffic exchange members) are only interested in getting more page views and not necessarily interested in buying a product or signing up for a service.
Since most are website owners or operators, however, it is certainly possible that someone might find what you are promoting interesting which could lead to a more established relationship over the long term. Traffic exchange programs are mostly used by small business owners or marketers who low cost (cheap or free) advertising campaigns.
You may find that your time is better spent on search engine optimization and your money is better spent on any of the other popular promotional methods such as pay per click advertising.
Tags: Traffic Exchange | Traffic Swarm
The Mozilla Foundation, developers of the popular Firefox web browser said Wednesday that they have reach a milestone with
100 million downloads. If you're not a user of FireFox, learn more at
SpreadFirefox.com.
You can't go to any of the popular Internet marketing forums without
hearing some Internet expert proclaiming that the key to top rankings
is content. No kidding. The problem is (beside that being a undeniably
vague statement) is that noone really knows how to create content that
guarantees top placement on search engines. As a result, building
content is not taken seriously because web site owners simply do not
make it a priority and that is most likely the case becuase they do not
know how. Without original content there is simply no hope at all that
you will keep your visitors interested enough to enable you to sell
your products and services - which results from traffic sent through
from high site rankings on search engines. Read our recent
article on
strategies to establish formal web content development strategies.
Tags: Content Development | Article Writing
You have been creating so many new pages recently you can count on the fact that you very well may have renamed a file the wrong name. No worries, create custom error pages for your customers to see. Save yourself a few minutes of finding out of date pages and save your site visitors some headaches by reading the following article about creating custom 404 error pages.
While there is no substitute for making sure all of your links are working correctly before your site is live, this is a nice little website developer insurance tactic if you will. Be smart, check your links with the very helpful W3C link checker.
The reason most of us believe in the Internet is because it presents opportunities that did not exist before. If you have a good idea, determination and a desire to work smart, any business can prosper on the Web. In 2004, there were approximately 24.7 million businesses in the United States according to the Office of Advocacy (Small Business Administration). Of that 24.7 million, 99.9% had fewer than 500 employees and the most recent data shows that there are only 17,000 large businesses (businesses with over 500 employees). What this means is that there is room for small business on the Web, the problem is how to get them there. The Internet presents unparalleled opportunities for small businesses but are the barriers to entry at this point in time simply too great? Website Services Magazine wanted to know and has compared the Big 4's Local Search Products to understand the opportunities being presented to small businesses looking to maximize their marketing dollars and how they can actually do so.
Comparing the Big 3 Local Search Products
What Website Owners Can Learn From The White Sox, A.J. Pierzynski
If you don't know, Website Services Magazine is
based in Chicago - one of the greatest cities in the world. And now
it's even better thanks in no small part to our very own White Sox! In
many respects however, the Sox are still Chicago's (if not the
Midwest's) team of choice.
So what does this mean to website owners? It
means that if you work hard everyday to make your Web presence as
efficient, effective and FUN as possible, (and not pay so much
attention to what your competitors are doing) then you have a chance at
winning your very own division - if not the whole darn series in the
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There will be a time however when you must capitalize on the mistakes
or failures of others - like our good friend and simply do your own
thing and what you think is right - like capitalize on an opportunity.
"Certain guys do, and certain guys don't. Each umpire has a different
way of going about things, making calls, ringing guys up," Pierzynski
said. "I didn't hear him say anything, so I ran."
You should run too - full speed ahead without looking back.
If there was any ever doubt in your mind, no, you are not alone on the Web. From a report by eMarketer on Internet growth:
"The Netcraft 'October 2005 Survey' found 74,409,971 sites, an increase of 2.68 million sites from its September survey. The gain makes 2005 the strongest year ever for Internet growth, with the Web adding 17.5 million sites, easily surpassing the previous annual mark of 16 million during the height of the dot-com boom in 2000."
Tags: Internet Stats | How Many Websites
Olny srmat poelpe can. Cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on!
Okay, this may be a little much but you may get the picture. People can overlook multiple misspellings if your core idea and concepts are solid. What does this mean for website owners? Don't sweat the small stuff - life is not a prargrpah.
If you are interested in spell checking your work anyway, here is the resource of the day:
www.spellcheck.net - Check whole pages of content for misspellings absolutely free
Tags: Spell Checker | Spell Check
For those involved in purchasing or even selling advertising on the Web, take a look at InternetSupervision.com's new Uptime Report. It enables websites to display the percentage of availability for their website - an important (or what should be an important factor) in determining cost or negotiating for a specific ad deal. Leverage is the key here - if the site you are purchasing from only has 90% availability you could conceivably ask for a ten percent discount. This could really shake things up in the world of online media buying.
Learn more at InternetSupervision.com
Tags: Web Site Monitoring | Internet Supervision | Website Availability
Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced a landmark agreement to connect users of their consumer instant messaging (IM) services on a global basis. The industry's first interoperability agreement between two distinct leading global consumer IM providers will give MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger users the ability to interact with each other, forming what is expected to be the largest consumer IM community in the world, estimated to be more than 275 million strong. So what does this mean to you? Well, if you are a user of instant messaging it means you may only have to use your preferred interface instead of downloading two and navigating between the two. You may find it interesting that Google Talk was left our of the partnership equation.
Tags: Yahoo | Microsoft | Instant messaging | IM
Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced four new royalty-free image collections are available through Adobe Stock Photos, bringing the total number of images to over 450,000. Adobe Stock Photos is accessed through Adobe Bridge, a hub for productivity, imagery and creativity that provides multi-view file browsing and smooth cross-product integration within Adobe Creative Suite 2 and CS2 versions of Adobe products. The additional images give Adobe Creative Suite 2 customers access to an even broader selection of royalty-free images, making it even easier to find and buy the right image without leaving the application.
Professional photographers and stock agencies now have the opportunity to submit their images to Adobe Stock Photos via image partners including: Image Source, IPN Relay, Getty Images and Masterfile Corporation. Submitting images through these third parties provide professional photographers and small stock houses another option for distributing and licensing their images.
New collections added to Adobe Stock Photos include: IPN Relay(TM), Image Source Ltd., Brand X Pictures by Jupiterimages(R) and Masterfile Corporation. These companies offer a variety of high-quality, unique contemporary stock photography, featuring mainstream images in an innovative modern style. There are now 13 collections from a variety of leading providers such as Photodisc(R) by Getty Images, Comstock(R) by Jupiterimages(R), Digital Vision(R) by Getty Images, imageshop(TM) royalty-free by zefaimages(TM) and amana(R), making Adobe Stock Photos the one-stop resource for creative professionals.
Tags: Web Site Image | Adobe | Website Services Magazine | Website Images
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If you are spending money at any of the pay per click search engines make sure there are not dramatic bid gaps happening. Daily bid management plays a pivotal role in ensuring you receive a positive return from your advertising budget.
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If you are spending money at any of the pay per click search engines make sure there are not dramatic bid gaps happening. Daily bid management plays a pivotal role in ensuring you receive a positive return from your advertising budget.
You may have seen this phenomenon when managing your bid for placement account. Your listing appear in the number two or three position and the site above yours is bidding dramatically higher - in some instances so much higher that it makes you wonder if somebody has a score to settle. While there may actually be a logical reason there is simply no excuse for this oversight - if you are responsible for managing bids - make sure you log in to your PPC account and make sure this is not happening to you.
Some PPC's, namely Overture, automatically default your listing to the first position when you add new terms. So if you don't set a maximum bid initially, you are going to be bidding one cent higher than the highest listing unless you lower your bids accordingly to make sure your costs do not exceed any potential profits. A reason you may see bid gaps (or what seem to be bid gaps) at smaller second tier pay per click providers is because these networks routinely share advertisers' results with several other search, portal or directory networks. Just because you are in the first position at one PPC however does not mean that you will be displayed in the first position at their partner sites. This is why advertisers routinely bid what appears to be dramatically higher - to receive placement on a broader netowrk. If you take this network bidding approach, it's crucial that you determine the optimal cost per click and this can typically be achieved through active monitoring of your ROI.
Whilst small volume phrases, in most instances, require less management than high volume phrases, high volume phrases will present opportunities to exploit gaps in the bidding where competitors’ budgets have been consumed or daily bid caps met. It is common for gaps to appear towards the top where vendors are bidding large amounts for high volume phrases. When this happens it often presents an opportunity to climb into a top spot on the bid ladder whilst maintaining a similar bid price. The importance of this is such that this media needs to be actively managed on a constant basis. Those that treat this as a traditional media buy in that they pay for x amount of inventory, check the results at the end of the month and renew again for the next month, typically produce insignificant returns for their investment. So Mind The Gap!
Tags: Bid Gaps | PPC | Website Services Magazine | Pay Per Click
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Instant Survey: Have you actively exploited bid gaps in PPC advertising? |
There seems to be quite a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about how to select a search engine optimization firm. While it is of course necessary to see first hand proof of results the firm you select has produced for clients, SEO is such a complex industry that there are a few questions you must ask to get a handle on not just overall approach but style.
Investigate Link Building Strategies:
Link building is essentially the core of "best-practice" SEO, which means that it is important to make sure that they give enough time to the effort associated with building IBL's or inbound links. Find out what strategies your SEO uses and research the impact they have on listings. As always, avoid link farms and do not break the bank on buying links from other sites.
Assistance in Improving Conversions:
There is a reason that many businesses select firms which provide a suite of services - they have more tools at their command to help you enhance conversions. For example, an pure SEO provider may be able to get you loads of qualified traffic but the conversions you generate may be low as a result of poor design. If you select an integrated online marketing firm, they can assist you with copywriting, and defining usability issue to name a few. In the end, the name of the game is getting the most conversions possible from your Internet marketing efforts so always make sure that the SEO firm you select is more concerned with conversions than the actual number of visitors they send or the placement your listing receives at search engine.
Availability or Openness to Proper Measurement:
There is simply no replacement for natural traffic (the traffic generated through non-sponsored listings on popular search engines (such as Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL or the slew of others in the market) and only qualified SEO's can generate such traffic. If you are concerned about how your SEO is measuring up and want to determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns managed by an outsourced SEO, make sure you have access to server logs in order to see not only the amount of traffic but where it is coming from and via what keywords.
Also consider utilizing a third party return on investment conversion tracker which lets you measure the effectiveness of individual campaigns - such as SEO, SEM, PPC, link exchanges, banners - from any location where a click can be counted. It works by appending the URL with a special alphanumeric code and inserting tracking code within two locations of your domain - typically a landing page and a page which indicates a successful conversion. Two such services are ConversionRuler.com and ROIspy.com.
Yahoo today released usage data on RSS - and what they found may surprise you. Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users: 12% of users are aware of RSS, and only 4% have knowingly used RSS. 27% of Internet users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start pages (e.g., My Yahoo!, My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.
So what does this mean for Website Owners?
It means that website owners must do a better job of making information available about how to utilize their RSS feeds if there is any hope of getting people to subscribe, much less profit from the burgeoning RSS advertising opportunities.
So Explain HOW TO USE RSS to Your Users!
Here is what Website Services Magazine says on its website:
RSS EXPLAINED TO USERS AT Website Services Magazine
Tags: Blogging | RSS | Website Services Magazine | Yahoo
Yahoo! released a beta version of its podcast search engine on Monday (October 9th, 2005). If you're still a little unsure about podcasting you are not alone - it still remains a mystery to some and arguably caters to a higher-end audience. If you're interested in starting your own podcast (and it's a decent approach to communicate to customers and prospects for business development, sales teams and public relations departments) you can do so by following along and visiting some of these popular 'Net resources.
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Instant WSM Survey:
Does Podcasting provide a viable opportunity to communicate with Internet business prospects? | |
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Explaining Podcasting: Podcasting is making audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online in a way that allows use to automatically download the files for listening at their convenience. According to Wikipedia ""Podcasting is a way of publishing files to a website that allows users to subscribe to the site and receive new files as they are posted. Most podcasts are spoken word audio created by individuals, often on a particular theme such as technology or movies. Because new files are downloaded automatically by subscribers, podcasting allows individuals to have a self-published, syndicated radio show."
Creating a Podcast: Ay...there's the rub. It is actually less complex than many believe. To record audio and create an MP3 file, many people are utilizing a software called Audacity because 1) it's free, 2) it's easy, and 3) it works really, really well. You can download Audacity here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. (review the helpful tutorials before getting started - PLEASE NOTE: you will have to download a program to export your files from audacity called LAME MP3)
Creating A Podcast RSS file: If you publish a weblog, you create what is known as an RSS feed (Real Simple Syndication) which is actually a text file created in Extensible Markup Language or XML that enables you to syndicate your content throughout the Web. It is important to create separate RSS feeds for your weblog AND your podcast for maximum exposure of each in the blogosphere and the podcastosphere respectively. While your weblog may automatically create an rss feed or an xml file you can use to syndicate, you may not know how to create your own when it comes to podcasting. WSM recommends creating an RSS feed specifically for your podcast at FeedBurner.com or FeedforAll.com.
Where to Submit Your Podcast SingingFish.com, Podcastalley.com, Podcast.net, BlogUniverse.com, DigitalPodcast.com, AllPodcasts.com, PodcastBunker.com, Podcasting-Station.com, PodcastDirectory.com, PodcastHost.com, Gigadial.com, Openpodcast.org, Potkast.com, Podsites.com, Pocketcasting.com, Rss-Network.com, PodcastPickle.com, Plazoo.com, PodcastingNews.com, Podcasting-Tools.com, PodcastDirectory.com, Podfeeder.com, Podfeed.net, Podscop.com, OMN.org, OurMedia.org, iPodderx.com, Podcatch.com, Odeo.com, PodcastShuffle.com, IdiotVox.com, BlogExplosion.com, Blinkx.tv, Loomia.com, Feedzie.com, BlastPodcast.com, Blawg.org, Blogdigger.com, EveryPodcast.com, ThePodcastNetwork.com
Is Podcasting a Phase?
Probably so but it has not stopped anyone from creating their own podcasts. Podcasting is undeniably a great way to communicate to business prospects or simply share your very own personal message with the Web. Since the barriers to creating a podcast are few, why not start one today?
Tags: Podcasting Create a Podcast Website Services Magazine
Several weeks ago, PR firm Edelman conducted a survey with Technorati about weblogs in order to better understand bloggers attitudes towards corporations and PR firms and help clients understand why and how they should engage the blogosphere. The survey generated over 800 responses and data which may be able to help you improve your enterprises approach to be viewed as a more credible source of information.
Some of the data revealed in the report:
- The majority of respondents (33.86%) said that "visibility as an authority in my field" was the primary reason they blogged, with "creating a record of my thoughts" a close second (31.54%).
- 8.52% of respondents said they blog daily or almost daily about companies, their products or their employees and 3.65% of respondents said their blog was completely devoted to a particular product, product area, or company.
- An overwhelming 70.52% of survey respondents said that they would like product samples from companies in order to evaluate products on their blog.
- 516 of the 811 respondents (62.85%) said that when looking for product information, they trust other bloggers the most, followed by company web sites (26.18%), corporate blogs (6.09%) and company press releases (4.87%).
Tags: Edelman Technorati Blogging Weblogs Website Services Magazine