Over the past two weeks there have been some significant changes that as internet based marketers we can’t ignore.

Pulling the facts and the rumours together it would look like Google just put itself at the hub of Web 2.0 just after making some sweeping PR rank changes that will lead to quite a few website models to suffering financially.

On the flip side those web based businesses based on solid content and principles look set to prosper even more!

Here’s what I know that you need to keep an eye on. Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider reported earlier that Myspace was joining the Google OpenSocial movement. If you haven’t come across that yet read his post on how OpenSocial looks set to flatten Facebook . As it was so nicely put over at techcrunch. Checkmate? MySpace … “Suddenly, within just the last couple of days, the entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game.”

This really struck me as something powerful but I didn’t twig just how important this was until a post by Seth Godin explained it. It allows users to take their social graph with them from one site to another. - Now that does open up some marketing opportunities.

So how might this relate to PR Changes.

The waters are a little muddy still and there are lots of thoughts and rumours doing the rounds. Some folk are pulling thier hair out as they have lost page rank. Wow.

With some notable exceptions, whatever changes Google made look to have been targeted at paid link sites and link farms. It’s not unexpected as far as I’m concerned as it is probably a continuation of Googles stated aim to improve search result quality.
<Side Note> I’m going to draw my line in the sand here regarding the use of duplicate content … on any type of site. While the search bots may find and list your content initially, as more data comes in and the numbers get crunched your visibility will decrease. Try thinking further ahead than 3 months.

What did catch my eye was a rumour that Google will be doing away with PR altogether at some point in November. This will of course have some SEO folks running round in circles crying blue murder but it will apparently be replaced with an alternative called VR or visitor rating. If all of this is bang on the money then your PR toolbar will be reset to zero and phased out to be replaced with a VR toolbar. (someone start writing a book on how to ).

Then as if that wasn’t enough to contend with, in the same article I find that Google are going to make sweeping changes to the adsense model that’s going to have millions of plain adsense site owners income slashed to almost nothing. Or not?

Here’s the principle (and don’t forget this is still a rumour at the moment). Instead of getting paid when your adsense ad is clicked once … now that person will have to click TWICE. {Click: - [box with message says] = HEY you’re clicking an advert! Do you really want to do that? Yes or No?}

That’s going to make people think isn’t it?

At first glance this looks like it’s going to rip the market and income will suffer and to start with some sites may see a decrease. However, people are funny creatures and we soon get used to change. The other argument is that because this will reduce click fraud the actual amount Google would be able to pay may actually go up.

By combining their dominance of Web 2 with improved adsense/adwords algorithms and introducing visitor generated page ranking in favour of link ranking. I can see you will end up paying more per valid click through from user valued sites.

The future looks very interesting for certain website income models. What do you think?

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To quote wikipedia

A misnomer is a term which suggests an interpretation that is known to be untrue. Such incorrect terms sometimes derived their names because of the form, action, or origin of the subject—becoming named popularly or widely referenced—long before their true natures were known.

I don’t know what triggered this train of thought but I’ve got it and I’m in the mood to write.

You see for some reason I’ve got a bug in my head about the concept of blogging mixed with marketing to make it an automatic process. I know the two do mix and people are making money but …

Here’s my mental paradox:

Part of it’s to do with ethics, Blogging and Web 2.0 is all about people. Giving people the ability to mix and interact with others who share information on common interests. It’s about building communities and making friends and contacts. Marketing got bolted on to it because people were blogging.

Marketing is all about driving people towards taking an action which normally involves spending hard earnt cash and a basic human trait, (well a trait I’ve got and the last time I looked I was human) is that we all try to get the best deal possible … and if possible … something ‘free’.

So far so good.

Now this where the rosy glow of blog marketing begins to start losing its shine for me. At least in the longer term as it’s presented in a few posts and emails I’ve come across. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi here is a simple tip that will help you begin to remember names. You’ll also find a link to a bonus report.

We’ve all done it, sometimes even to those that we’ve known forever - their name just escapes us. It’s like the odd socks that seem o disappear from the washing machine - names just float into a mental black hole somewhere. Normally when we want it to happen least.

Why is this? Well … the chances are, when you’re introduced to someone for the first time, you’re not really concentrating on their name. Just think about it for a second - do introductions normally go something like this:

“Hi , I’d like you to meet Phil. This is my husband’s good friend, the one I told you about before. He’s the one that works as a physical therapist with the world champions. Remember I told you he got us those great seats this time last year when we went to the game?
That was a amazing. Anyway, I wanted you two to meet so you could put faces to the names when we talk over things.”

Wow, that’s a lot of information to remember about … what was his name again?

All of that other information you got about Phil is distracting you from his name, which was the first bit of information, making it even harder to remember.

So what’s the knack to remembering peoples names?

The real trick is to be prepared for this when meeting new people. The moment you hear their name, concentrate on that and block out the other information. Let’s face it, when you are introduced to someone you are normally told their name (and if you’re not told then it is really easy and polite just to ask something like; “Hi. I didn’t catch your name. What do I call you?”).

You’ll probably have much of the other information repeated during the conversation anyway, but their name is the one thing that they’ll expect you to remember. So make that the focus of your thought and you’ll be sure to get it right the first time, every time!

A good way to help to reinforce your memory is to say their name as soon as possible in normal conversation.
Something like, ‘So , have you had any thoughts on how we can improve your memory?’

It’s very simple and very effective. Try it and see. The more you do it the easier it gets.

Don’t forget that we expand on this and lots more in the book ‘You’ll never forget anything ever again - The easy way to master or improve your memory’. It comes complete with an MP3 audio version so you can listen where ever you want. You can improve your memory anywhere.

Grab your copy today

Want A Better Memory

I’ll post another tip tomorrow.

www.improve-my-memory.com

and for those of you that are wondering - what was I going to say

If you are reading this then the next thing I hope you will do is take some positive action.

Now … this post has nothing and everything to do with online marketing.  You see a mate of mine has just set himself a target which I think he’ll beat a lot sooner than he thinks.  His site is a little piece of tranquillity on a very loud web and I can only urge you to take a moments break and see for yourself.

A little gratitude is a great video/poem that will hopefully help us all realise just how lucky we are.  No matter how bad things may seem.  Stuart Alexander’s aim is to get one million comments and help one million people discover some of the really important things in life that we often tend to overlook.

So … take a short break, look, listen, enjoy and add your comment.  Then … maybe put a post on your blog or site and help others see what’s really important in life and help one of the good guys reach his goal.

Thanks

http://www.alittlegratitude.com/

I really hate saying it but things don’t look as good as they did at launch for Blogrush at the moment.

It launched, it had a problem, we got notified. Then there was another problem and we were kept informed by a really long email about the problems John Reese and the team were having with hackers and people generally abusing the system.

So five days on and I’ve still got no stats being displayed at the blogrush site via my dashboard. ummmm

I check my own stats and find out that I’ve got tons of page displays but hardly any click throughs to my site from other blogrush users sites. And I’m not alone. A quick search of the blogosphere shows numerous other people all saying the same kind of thing.

I know it could be the quality of my post titles but with so many people all murmering, I have to come to the conclusion there’s maybe more to it.

A really interesting post by Noah Fleming pointed me in the direction of a blogrush clone that has just started up. While it shows that John’s idea was great it also shows that the competition and the potential problems are mounting as well. Just read what he says about the black hat methods affecting genuine blogrush users.

All in all I like the idea of BlogRush but I can’t understand how John can justify saying that all members sites will be manually checked. That’s going to cost like how much? And blogrush is a free service …

Then there were the concerns that BlogRush was neither accepted or rejected by Google and that your adsense earnings could be at risk. Depending on which posts and information you read this is either true or a lie. The principle being is that BR skirts a very thin line in the type of service it is.

At the moment it’s s good idea with problems that are being sorted out. The problem is that as a user I want to see results or that widget is just a waste of space.

With all of the problems it also makes it that much harder to get other people to sign up for something and that affects how successful BR will be for you and me.

I hope that John and the team get things sorted out quickly. Make that very quickly or I’m going to have to remove the widget from my blog and use the space for something that does what it says on the tin.

At the very least I can fill it with an ad or two. At the moment I’d feel happier with an ad that I know I might earn something from at some point as opposed to a service that can’t deliver as promised.

Good luck John.

Today dealdotcom opened it’s doors and as I indicated in an earlier post EasyMemberPro is the first deal made available to it’s members.  At $148.50 for the unlimited license version this is real value for money.  Especially considering the single site license is normally $138.

If you are looking for an easy way to set up and manage a membership site this is the tool.  I’ve met Kim who is one of the people behind EMP and I also own my own copy.  It rocks.  It’s easy to set-up and makes life easy for those who want to run a membership site.  Having said that you will need to learn how to use it to get the best out of it but don’t panic it shouldn’t take you long.

Get yourself over to dealdotcom now and sign up.  Signing up is free and start promoting it because apart from the deals you will get you can also earn from the two tier affiliate programme

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog or post your questions about how to maximise the two tier affiliate program so you can start making some cash.

BlogRush:
In a way I feel sorry for dealdotcom launching around the same time as John Reese launched blogrush.  You see BR has captured the imagination of the blogging community in a way that he wasn’t expecting.  It’s easy to understand why but I got this email from Mike Filsame and in it was this little gem;

“I have never seen anything like this. Not in Internet Marketing, not with anyone or any site I have ever been a part of. It has totally exceeded any wild expectation I had, and I was ready for big things. We are totally blown away. (big smile)”
~ John Reese

The publicity generated around blogrush has been immense.

Aggregating newsfeeds isn’t new, I’ve been using CARP for almost two years but adding the viral factor was a stroke of genius and I can well imagine that John and his team have been nervously keeping an eye on the server loads as news spread across the blogosphere like a wildfire.

An email update from the blogrush team yesterday started to answer some of the initial concerns about tracking and other issues so all in all things are on the up and up.

To start getting some free traffic to your blog simple sign up for blogrush and add the widget today.

So a quick look around the blogosphere tells me loads of people are promoting dealdotcom. Why?

Here’s what I know. Jason Potash, Marc Quarles and Jason Katzenback are the people behind DDC or dealdotcom. Collectively they have created software that has helped lots of people make lots of cash. They have been around for what seems like forever and they are very innovative.

I’ve not met them but I do use some of their products some of the time. When I’ve had a problem they’ve had the support in place to deal with it or help me through it. I can’t say fairer than that.

DDC launches for real on Tuesday 18th of this month and today they opened the doors of the project for a sneak peek. The marketing for the project is quite effective. Sorry make that very effective because there’s a lot more coverage than I expected, once I started delving to see who was saying what.

As I expected everything is very slick and smooth flowing, the sales patter, pitch and process draws you in. The promise of making big money is there but there’s a but for cynical old me. You decide if this is a problem … Read the rest of this entry »