A Blog For Bloggers
Today we spotted sliding text ads on one of our blogs.
Previously we had seen widget ads, twitter integrated ads on our blog, now sliding text ads.
It grabbed my attention because they’re text ads. Happy to see that Google is still trying it’s best to innovate with text ad formats.
Here is a video I shot for you people:
Hover over the individual ads to highlight it, once you pause over a ad link, that ad opens/expands.
Hope this increases CTR 🙂
Mani Karthik is a professional blogger and SEO Consultant from Cochin, India. And he had previously worked in a full time job, as a in-house SEO Specialist with an MNC for 5 years.
He has worked for many big companies so far, to help them optimize their website. You can see the list of them, in the about me section of DailySEOBlog.com, which is his primary blog.
Now without hurting your curiosity, here is the interview:
Satish: Please introduce yourself and about your online ventures, to our readers.
Mani: I’m an SEO / Social Media Consultant and a professional blogger. So that means I earn a living out of blogging and helping people sell things online with the help of SEO.
Satish: When did you start blogging seriously? What motivated you to choose internet business?
Mani: Started off back in my office days where I was working as in house SEO consultant. Started blogging as a part time fun thing, but it soon grew on me. Made many mistakes, and ultimately settled down with my blog dailyseoblog.com, for which I’m known today.
Satish: Do you have any other day job (9 to 5 job)?
Mani: No.
Satish: With a popular SEO blog, you might be a busy man. How does your day look like?
Mani: Starts off with my regular work out, then scanning through emails and rss feeds, then blogging, tweeting, then SEO work, project reports , client calls and meetings. Then I hop on to social media and pretty much remain there till the end of day. I do keep a schedule and try to remain as organized as possible, but I also love it when I’m having a handful to deal and is overwhelmed with it.
Satish: 3 things that you consider a waste of time, which you do.
Mani: Nothing at the moment, but as I find something I’d be quick to quit it.
Satish: From your experience, what do you think are the 3 most misunderstood SEO myths?
Mani: The myths about link exchanges, meta information and page rank.
Satish: Your best 3 SEO tips ever.
Mani:
1 – Build content that will force people to link to you.
2 – Build your brand on the Internet that your target audience won’t miss seeing.
3 – Develop authority to your domain.
Satish: With all these years of SEO consultancy experience, what are the common mistakes that you see your clients making on their blogs or business websites.
Mani: Lack of content. And sometimes people expect results to appear over the weekend. Also there are people who approach me after having done all possible black hat stuff and expecting a come back.
Satish: What’s your take on Twitter? Many people say that it’s a good marketing tool, while many others dislike calling Twitter as a marketing tool.
Mani: Its unfair to label twitter, because it has developed (by users) over the time into many forms starting from a simple communication device to many different uses. Like once the mobile was, its a communication tool for many, while some use it for tele calling, some even use it for texting, while some use it as a device to browse the web. Similarly Twitter is different things to different people.
For me, Twitter is a great tool to communicate and connect with like minded folks. And the good thing about it is that it isn’t complicated like many so called social networking sites.
Satish: Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz! etc — Order them according to your priority ?
Mani: Digg > SU > Mixx > Delicious > Reddit – But they are not on the same stage. Each of them have different character and uses, its just that I use one more than the other according to my preferences.
Satish: What are your 3 main strategies for blog promotion?
Mani:
1 – Content.
2 – Brand.
3 – Communication.
Satish: What repels you the most from a blog/website(animation at your face advertising etc)?
Mani: Stale content.
Satish: Your tips, advice for newbie bloggers/webmasters.
Mani: Keep consistent, dont lose your cool. On the internet, success doesn’t happen overnight, its a gradual process. If you’re looking for making money overnight, try stock trading.
Satish: One more question of my personal interest.. I have heard the podcasts on your blog, they are really of high quality. What devices/hardware do you use for the purpose?
Mani: Skype and some free sound editing software like Audacity. I record all the podcasts/ video / talks from my Mac.
Satish: Your Personal hobbies and interests?
Mani: Movies, music, and traveling.
Satish: Life before blogging, blogging life, where you want to see your blog in next 5 or 10 years time? And how do you feel about it.
Mani: After 5 years, I want to be doing the same thing as today and earning five times as of now. Honest.
Satish: Some of your life’s ambitions?
Mani: Setting up my own publishing agency.
Satish: How does your family and friends react when you say “I am working in Internet, from my Home!”
Mani: The reason I’m working from home is my family. I don’t want to be feeling guilty staying away from them, working for someone else. So they’re cool, in fact they help me very much with their support. Friends mostly don’t understand the idea except for the Internet savvy ones.
Satish: Please tell something, to all your fans and followers ..
Mani: Feel free to add me to your social networks. 🙂
We take this opportunity to thank Mani Karthik for the interview. And wish him a greater success in coming years.
Hope you have all enjoyed the interview and would practice, some of the practical things shared by Mani Karthik. Hope to hear your thoughts in the comment section.
Mani Karthik has moved his blog to a brand new domain called DailyBloggr, to focus on a broader topic. Make sure you visit the new site.
Google trying all means to promote its browser, Chrome. Google had never advertised on traditional TV. response when it first launched. But as for today, there are only 1.4% of internet users using Chrome.
A couple of months ago, Google Japan team had produced a fun video to demonstrate how clean and simple Google Chrome user interface is. This video went viral in the blogoshere/and internet as a whole, by seeing this positive response, Google has decided to make the video reach more people.
we talked to our Google TV Ads team to see how we could show the video that our Japan team developed to a wider audience in a measurable way. Using some of the results from our placement-targeted ads on the Google Content Network, we designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser, and also help us better understand how television can supplement our other online media campaigns.
So today, we’re pleased to announce that we’re using Google TV Ads to run our Chrome ad on various television networks starting this weekend. We’re excited to see how this test goes and what impact television might have on creating more awareness of Google Chrome.
Source: GoogleBlog
Infolinks, Inc. established in 2007, is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising services, working with online content publishers worldwide.
Mission
Infolinks enables website owners and publishers to benefit from In-Text advertising directly while earning the highest revenue share.
Infolinks, Inc. established in 2007, is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising services, working with online content publishers worldwide.
Infolinks mission and vision as mentioned on their website:
Mission
Infolinks enables website owners and publishers to benefit from In-Text advertising directly while earning the highest revenue share.
Vision
Infolinks will integrate In-Text advertisements into a growing number of websites, bridging the gap between online publishers and advertisers and bringing premium, relevant content to Internet visitors worldwide.
There is a long going debate in the internet about the usage of InText advertising. Today we have the industries leading Company in our interview and it has provided very good results to many publishers who we know personally. So here is the interview..if you have any questions regarding InfoLinks, you can ask in the comment section.
1. Please introduce yourself and about InfoLinks to our readers.
A: Infolinks presents the next generation of In-Text Advertising. In-Text advertising inserts text link advertisements within the content of your website, usually in the form of double-underline hyperlinks. Upon a hover of the mouse, a floating informational bubble opens with content from an advertiser. If clicked, the visitor is directed to the advertiser’s landing page and you earn advertising revenue; otherwise, when the mouse is moved away from the hyperlink, the bubble disappears. Each time your website visitors click on an Infolinks In-Text ad, you get paid!
2. How are you different from your competitors? And what do you do to standout of the crowd?
A: Infolinks leads the industry with the most relevant in-text advertising links, record high conversion rates, and the highest revenues. We are so confident that Infolinks will generate high revenues, that we actually guarantee the industry’s highest revenue share in your contract.
In addition, we welcome all legitimate websites – big and small – to experience the next generation of In-Text advertising. Unlike other in-text providers, joining Infolinks involves no sign up fees, hidden commitments or qualification minimums.
Finally, rather than paying only for clicks that are based in a limited number of countries, Infolinks will monetize all of your website’s traffic, including international.
3. Is InfoLinks affected by the “First mover advantage theory”. As I see that there were some other In-Text advertising networks already existing before InfoLink?
A: The “first mover advantage theory” has been disproved many times in several different IT fields . Since Infolinks joined the In-Text advertising market, we have proven again and again that our In-Text ads are superior and yield higher revenues than our competitors. If you look it up on any major search engine you will find that there are many articles and testimonials to support it. Infolinks provides the next generation of In-Text ads – our vast community of publishers and advertisers that is expanding everyday is the ultimate proof for that.
4. Did you ever got any complaint about “principles of web usability” due to Intext advertising? How do you defend it?
A: In-Text ads will enhance your published content with user triggered, less intrusive advertising that won’t distract from your site’s content. Every day, new publishers are discovering the benefits of generating an additional stream of revenues without taking up any real estate on their website. In fact, our in-text ads contribute to the experience of the viewer by linking the content to ads related to the text they are reading.
5. “I want to show InfoLinks ads only to my search engine traffic and not to my regular visitors”. How can I do this ?
A: Yes, of course you can, the Infolinks 1-minute integration is very easy, and then you can present it to search engine traffic only, just as you would do so to any other type of content.
6. What measures do you take to make the ads relevant to the content?
A: The Infolinks proprietary algorithm scans your pages and highlights words that will generate the highest possible revenues for you. The algorithm gives priority to words with ads that are related to your site’s category. You can set a general category for your account or even define specific categories for every page. If the algorithm can find valuable words in the text that are related to the category you chose – these words will be highlighted as In-text ads.
7. You claim to be the Industry’s best revenue sharing company. How much percentage do you actually share with your publishers? Do you pay for clicks from all around the world or are you targeting and paying for only specific country traffic clicks?
A: Infolinks leads the industry with the highest revenue share in the market. We are so confident that Infolinks will generate high revenues, that we actually guarantee the industry’s highest revenue share in your contract. The exact revenue share is set according to the sites characteristics and traffic data. Infolinks monetizes all of your traffic – Rather than paying only for clicks that are based in a limited number of countries, Infolinks will monetize all of your website’s traffic, including international.
9. We are very much curious about all the guys behind InfoLinks.com, and we want to have a look at your office. If you have any video and photographs(of your employees and office) then please share it with our readers.
10. How do you define success?
We aim to build a long and lasting successful partnership with each and every one of our publishers; A partnership that is based on trust and mutual benefits from In-text ads.
Our success is providing our publishers with high revenues along side with a great service, turning their success into our success.
11. What are the mistakes you see your publishers and advertisers are making, in using InfoLinks service properly?
A: The best advice we can give to our publishers is to take advantage of their customization options. Publishers can maximize their revenues by customizing Infolinks especially for their websites. Inside the publisher center, each publisher can control the look and feel of the links, including colors, number of links per page, and form of underlining.
Publishers should also be sure to integrate Infolinks onto the most content rich pages of their websites. The more text a page contains, the more opportunities there are for linking text to revenue.
12. Your advice for all those who are not yet using InfoLinks on their blog and are looking for a good Intext adnetwork.
A: We welcome any legitimate website with textual content to monetize text with Infolinks In-Text ads. With have no sign up fees or hidden commitments, come take advantage of the industry’s highest revenues for in-text ads. Just fill out our short online application and complete an effortless integration process to start linking your text to revenues now!
13. Please tell something, that you would like all your advertisers/publishers/ and others to know about InfoLinks.com
A: Infolinks is the highest paying in-text provider and can be a good source of revenues to every website. If you have a blog or website, it takes 1 minute and no commitments to start getting paid – so why not give it a try?
If you want to use InText advertising on your website, then why to use something then the industries leading InText advertisement provider. No minimum requirement needed. It just requires your website to be legitimate. You can fill the application to start using InfoLinks. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
We have heard a lot about both Online as well as offline marketing.
Marketing strategies have been changing from the day it was invented. Its good to see many new and sophisticated techniques coming every now and then and solving many problems..and creating some!
First thing first..
Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
With increase in the population and user demands, many businesses started appearing and the competition obviously increased among businesses. It increased so much that its now the matter of survival to most companies. So the only way left on their part is aggressive marketing strategies, which brings them large number of conversions.
An example:-
We see in daily commercials showing, women with black colour skin complexion being harassed and the white women being respected, and the next thing is they show their cosmetics product and tell us to use it and to turn white! and to get the respect from the society. These kind of ads work magically and bring about many conversions.
On the other hand if they start showing ads with not so good looking women in the ad, people watching it, will take it easy and are less likely to purchase the product!
I don’t really have to tell you which ads would be more desirable to marketers.
But the question is..Do you think such ads are an ethical marketing?
Playing with the human emotions? Yes…No.
Answer varies from person to person, depending on their perspective.
Some people may say that this kind of marketing is not at all wrong, because we all see it almost daily and are used to it!. We are so used to it that we think that its not a big issue.
While some people say that this kind of marketing is completely unethical, as it plays with the emotions of people for meeting marketers selfish goals. There are many others who defend that this is a ethical marketing and the best way to get a conversion.
Its interesting to hear all your ideas and thoughts. So please please please share your thoughts in the comment section of this article.
Marketers target group of people who are more likely to purchase their products, hence making them more profits.
Some examples:-
1. Ads showing more imaginary adventures, cartoon etc may target children.
2. Quick Money making ads may attract more of business people.
3. Cosmetics ads for girls.
4. Body building ads for men.
5. Speaker systems for music lovers. etc.
As all these production industries have a lot of competition, they need to reduce the price inorder to sustain in the growing competition.
Desperate buyers:-
There are products like medicine which will be purchased by people as they are in a situation where they can’t give more importance to money(when compared to their health). They are in a position where purchasing the medicine becomes crucial. In these kind of situations marketers may take advantage of the situation of people and may try to mint more money. Making use of the desperate situation will get them more conversion and hence more money. But again the question arises in our mind..Whether its Ethical or unethical marketing ?
Obviously, I’m not speaking about all emotional marketing. Most of the marketing involves interaction with peoples emotions, but I am talking about the one’s which is too low in its purpose and aims only at the sale of their product(conversion).
Impatient Aspirers are a group of target customers who have some what same taste and status. Watch the funny video below. Please do not miss watching the video. Its funny as well as insightful, and worth thousand words.
There are many ways of monetizing a blog. One way is to write an ebook and sell it on your blog. This is a popular and proved to be efficient way of making money online. Now to get most money out of the ebook, you need to sell as many copies of ebook as possible. And to do so, you need to Market it properly(if you do not have an already well established blog).
Landing page should be more engaging and trust worthy. When someone lands on your landing page and reads about your product details, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect. Attention getting strategies and tactics can be helpful if the product, service or information lives up to the promise.
Rather than trying to sell an idea to the masses, you sell something desirable to people who already want and have a need for it. It’s much easier to fulfill a need than to create one.
So there are many many marketing strategies and as far as I know many people are trying and succeeding with newer marketing strategies each day. So, as a marketer we need to be innovative, creative and responsible. As a customer we need to be more cautious and clear about what we want and what we do not want.
Over years we have seen many MLM’s(Multi-Level Marketing) or Network Marketing coming, growing, glowing and going!
What makes people join MLM’s ?
Its the money. The easy way to start earning money, by referring other people to join under you.
So, from where do MLM companies get the money from?
Most MLM companies sell products. By purchasing which people become their members. These MLM companies remove the middle man between the product and the customers, hence saving a lot of money.
Another big saving comes from the marketing effort. There is no need to get a VIP or a celebrity to endorse the products. So a lot of money is again saved. These MLM companies then distribute the money saved, to all its members, by following some of their rules/policies.
So, how do these MLM companies do the marketing ?
Its done by the members of MLM. These members do the marketing on behalf of MLM company through WORD OF MOUTH, these products will be sold and new members keep joining(thus products are continuously sold), everybody(most of them) make good income.MLM is just an apt example for the WORD OF MOUTH marketing.
Here is a list of WORD OF MOUTH marketing, that you can choose, test and implement on your blogs, to increase the traffic and conversion rate significantly.
* Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.
* Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.
* Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.
* Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.
* Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.
* Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.
* Influence Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.
* Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.
* Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.
* Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.
* Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends, to your product or service.
More on Marketing Strategies(mainly to increase your blog traffic) coming soon..so please subscribe to our free email/rss updates and stay tuned.
Please do not forget to share your thoughts about current marketing trendz. What Marketing strategies you are following? What strategies worked and which did not work for you? Whats Ethical and Unethical about it? Please share your opinions in the comment section below and involve yourself in the conversation going on here.
This strategy involves investment of some money. This method will surly bring in more traffic, if done in a smarter way.
Target the right audience. If your blog is about Gadgets, then advertise on those websites which are popular in that niche. By doing so, you will get some quality traffic and some of the traffic may convert into loyal readers.
Now coming to the point, make use of some discount coupons available all over the internet, to advertise using Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Market, Bidvertiser, Text-Link-Ads etc.
By doing so, you will reduce the cost of advertising to almost 50 – 80%!
Yes you read it right. You can almost reduce the advertising cost by 50 – 80% or even more.
Google Adwords or its power users has previously given 150 to 200$ free advertising coupons. Recently I had found that there was maximum of 50$ off when you signup for adwords for the first time. — Search for the coupon code in Google.
Yahoo Search Market, provides frequent free advertising coupons to its existing customers. And the first time advertiser will get 25$ off[Offer might have expired. Again use search engine and you will most probably get one].
Bidvertiser gives 20$ free advertising for the first time advertiser.
Text-link-ads, has comeup with a new adverting system called InLink advertising, where they place dofollow links on the blogs where you purchase the advertising. As part of their public launch, TLA (InLinks) is offering $100 worth backlinks for just $1, for a limited time.
By utilizing this opportunity you can get good Technorati authority and Google may rank you high!
To grab this big opportunity, signup an account with TLA, and click on the “BUY LINKS” -> InLinks.
Now enter “Keyword or phrase” relevant to your blog topic, and pick as many links as you want so that the total adds up to $100.00. Usually PR4 links come at $25 a piece, PR3 at $20, PR2 at $12 and PR1 at $10 etc. Just use your common sense while selecting these links, so that you benefit more out of the deal. After selecting the links worth 100$, click on the add to chart button at the end. Now put the link of your blog which you want to advertise. After checking everything, press “Checkout”. Now you get the option to pay 1$ by using your credit card, after using the coupon code 100free. And a happy thing is, TLA also allow us to pay using paypal.
See for the link to paypal payment at the end of the same page. Click on it and follow the instruction.
Do not fear of penalty, as the link looks very natural and not like paid advertising.
And the links will be placed for 30 days.
Now please read on further without fail..
Many of the above offers are valid only for the first time advertisers. And these offers are given with the intention that you will continue to be their advertiser even after the expiry of the offer.
So most of these companies[This is written in general, and it do not pointout to any particular company] set a “Subscription” to your Credit Card and/or to your paypal account.
So be careful and cancel[if you are not sure to continue advertising for the next month] the authorization of them once you pay them the initial amount for the first time.
For example:-
When you pay for X adNetwork for the first time using paypal, it may set the authorization to X adNetwork for further automatic payment for the coming months.
[ Actually paypal will ask you for confirmation before setting the authorization, but most beginners will skip reading and may click Yes.]
To remove it:- Goto your paypal account, click on the “Transaction Details”(in Recent Transaction Section) and then on “View Billing Agreement Details” link. Now see the “Status:” and click on the Cancel button. Thats all, you will not be billed by X adNetwork without your permission.
So be careful while doing online transaction. And do not waste your money without making proper use of discount coupons!.
Actually many adnetworks provide such discount to attract customers and to make them use their service somehow and to show them that their adnetwork can bring them more benefits. But many people just use these discount coupons and get traffic to their blog and then discontinue using them. But I think, if any of these advertising programs seems to be bringing you high quality traffic, and if you are getting more returns to your investment, then why to stop paid advertising? Use the discount coupons, offers etc and experiment which one suits you the best and continue with them.
This also holds good for any kind of online purchase. You can look for a good discount for your first time hosting.
If its hard earned money, then use it wisely 🙂
Like this, you can do a quick google search before using any ad network for advertising purpose or directly contact the company people and ask them for a discount coupon.
I can’t believe this, but its true. As I was going through my emails, I saw a mail from twittad.
Email from Twittad:-
 |
| Dear technotip , |
| Congratulations! Your Twitter profile technotip has been sold at Twittad.com. |
| Your profile has been purchased by Twittad for 1 month at $ 5.00 . |
| Please login to your Twittad account in the next few hours. After login follow the instructions to download the advertisement. |
| Upload the advertisement onto your Twitter profile by selecting -> Settings -> Design -> Use Custom Style Below -> Browse file for the downloaded ad -> Click Save |
| Thanks!
Twittad Team Follow us @Twittad |
Here is the details(screen shot) that I got in my Twittad account after activating the advertisement.
To kick start their business, they have started self promotion(they have started advertising about Twittad itself). I think all the twitter users who have signedup for Twittad and have set the price tag 5$ and below, have got this email from Twittad. This campaign is better than providing 5$ bonus for signingup as Twittad publisher 🙂 . And there is nothing to worry for Twittad, because they promise to pay only when your account reaches 20$ ! Hope no one will reach it(atleast not in the near future).
And I don’t think this concept is going to work. Because I myself rarely visit anybodies profile while I am chatting to them on Twitter. So where is the value for advertisers?
I had just signed up for Twittad out of curiosity. And I even fear that, my twitter account may get banned for using it for making some bugs!
Anyway, I don’t use Twitter quite often, so thought of giving it a try. And I am not actually interested in making any money from my twitter account using TwittAd, but I wanted to write an article about it, so just signedup and used it, to know something about it, before writing.
Here is the link to my twitter profile . Visit my profile to see TwittAd advertisement concept live(Only till 17/10/2008 ) 🙂
We could see that, many people use their paypal account for the internet transaction, than their Credit Cards. And many people contacted us about this issue, after reading this “Best Pay Per Click Network- Bidding System” article.
So we thought of writing about it, for more clarification….
We could see that, many people use their PayPal account for the internet transaction, than their Credit Cards. And many people contacted us about this issue, after reading this “Best Pay Per Click Network- Bidding System” article.
So we thought of writing about it, for more clarification….
There is an option to use PayPal. (In case you use PayPal, there is a minimum deposit of 20 USD in order to claim the 20 USD free bonus).
To fund your account, signup as Bidvertiser Advertiser. Goto “Advertisers Center” tab and hit the “Manage funds”—>”Add funds” tabs. Then select the amount that you want to transfer from your PayPal account. You can fund 20$ or 50$ or 100$ or 150$ or 200$ or 300$, the choice is left on your budget.
Select the amount and then click on “Add Fund” button. Then you will be taken to secure payment server of Bidvertiser, there you click on the ” prefer PayPal” link in the top of that page. Then you will be taken to PayPal billing page or you can login to your paypal account(see below screen shots) to fund your Bidvertiser account.
Once you start advertising and your 20$ + 20$(Free) gets finished, then you can just pause all your ads.
Do not miss this opportunity to advertiser with Bidvertiser, with FREE 20$. You can actually get lot of benefit from Bidvertiser Advertising, as you only pay when somebody clicks on your ad. No CPM costs will affect your money and you can display your ads on thousands of websites. Signup as Bidvertiser Advertiser and get one of the best Adverting deals.