Myspace Marketing - Take it Easy

If you are going to try and leverage Myspace for marketing, softly softly is the right approach. 15k Challenge's blog explains.

Google AdSense Help

There's a Google Group at:

http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help

if you're looking for hints and tips.

Affiliate Tip of the Day - Back to School

Back to School time is something for affiliate marketers to think about. aojon talks about it on his blog.

TopRank Tools for Social Marketing Optimization

The TopRank blog has some new tools for social marketing optimization.

Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization is the technique of leveraging social networking sites such as Myspace, Flikr and del.icio.us. Rohit Bhargava has a nice post on the 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization which gives you some food for thought. It looks as though we have some homework to do, although we do already have a Myspace page.

Technorati Tag: Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization is the technique of leveraging social networking sites such as Myspace, Flikr and del.icio.us. Rohit Bhargava has a nice post on the 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization which gives you some food for thought. It looks as though we have some homework to do, although we do already have a Myspace page.

Technorati Tag: Social Media Optimization

50 Top Search Blogs Ranked by SEOmoz

Randfish at SEOmoz gives his top 50 search blogs:

http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1286

Danny Sullivan Leaving Search Engine Watch

In case you hadn't heard, search guru Danny Sullivan is leaving Search Engine Watch. ShoeMoney has his own views on the subject, plus a list of all the blogs that covered this, amongst which will probably be some great SEO blogs, but we've yet to sift through them.

Autoblog USA gets a Bentley to Play With

Evidence of just how far blogging has come:

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/08/30/
in-the-autoblog-garage-2006-bentley-continental-flying-spur/

The Apprentice USA Back on our Screens

The Apprentice USA is back on our screens with a late night slot at 11.20pm on BBC2 on Wednesdays. Whilst we have a preference for the UK version, and in particular the boardroom dismissals by Sir Alan Sugar, Donald Trump's US version is also on our "must see" TV. As web marketers we like to see what we can learn from the "real world". In this first episode, the two teams (high school leavers vs college grads) were given the task of promoting a burger at Burger King. Here's what we learnt:

- Putting your most attractive people on the point of sale is a good idea (it puts customers in a better mood and makes selling easier ... okay, everyone knew that already).
- Concentrate on getting the basics right, in this case having enough staff at the point of sale.
- Competitions for half decent prizes will get people's attention (in this case air tickets to Las Vegas).
- Make sure your marketing has a clear and simple message.

Finally, if you get fired, there's always Yahoo! hotjobs, as evidenced by the ad on top of the taxi that picked up the fired candidate.

Jim Lillig Discusses Top Affiliate Techniques

There's lots of discussion about techniques used by top affiliates in this presentation by Jim Lillig entitled "Co-Opetition, Comparison Sites and Conversion" at Affiliate Summit 2006 East (note there are a few references to the adult industry). The guy certainly doesn't pull any punches and there is plenty of food for thought. Thanks to the Affiliate Tip Blog by Shawn Collins for posting this. Links to presentation as follows:

Google Video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8349225407979287614&hl=en

Transcript:
http://www.affiliatesummit.com/jim_lillig_0706.pdf

84 Alternatives to Google AdSense

There many alternatives to Google AdSense for site revenue, you'll find a list at the link below:

http://deanhunt.com/life-after-google-adsense/

How to Get into Google and Yahoo! News

A nice article from Site Reference explains how:

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/
Getting-Into-Google-and-Yahoo-News.html

AssociatePrograms.com Affiliate Resource

We were just looking at the info on affiliate marketing in wikipedia, and we found a link to AssociatePrograms.com. This looks to have some great resources on it, and we're going to take a closer look.

Technorati Tag: affiliate marketing

Affiliate Heads Up of the Week - Microsoft Zune

The first in the series, how long (if at all) we'll continue giving out these gems we're not sure. Anyway, anyone who has tried selling Apple iPods over the net will know that they are a popular internet buy, so affiliate marketers will want to be paying attention to the Microsoft Zune player, which Microsoft hopes will challenge the mighty iPod and includes a 30GB hard drive, three-inch TFT LCD, an FM tuner, wireless 802.11 b/g, and USB 2.0 support. Nice.

Technorati Tag: zune

Time Warner Buys Video Game Review Site

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2006/08/16/time-warner-buys-gaming-site/

Radio Stations from Podcasts with Podango.com

Yet-to-launch Podango.com hopes to corner the podcast market by aggregating podcasts into expert-driven channels similar to radio stations. See TechCruch post for more:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/29/
podango-to-create-podcast-channels/

TV Shows Only Available on the Internet

Jeff Pulver has a list:

http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/005282.html

AOL Searcher No. 4417749 Found

As many of you will already know, AOL recently released data on millions of searches performed by its users, one of who has now been found (article from the NY Times).

Types of Links and How to Get Them

Getting good links to your site is hard work, but can often reap dividends. SEO expert Stuntdubl has a good summary of the types of links available and how to get them:

http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/08/21/link-types/

Technorati Top 100 Blogs

If you're wondering why your blog gets no visitors, maybe you need a change of subject matter. You can check out the top 100 blogs on technorati below:

http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/?faves=1

Videoblog about Technorati

Get up to speed about the blog search engine Technorati with this videoblog featuring the people who built it:

http://ryanishungry.com/?p=19

Technorati tag = technorati

Robert Scoble Interview by DotNetRocks

http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=193

King of the blogosphere Robert Scoble, who has moved on from Microsoft to PodTech.net, is interviewed by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell of the DotNetRocks show.

Blog Marketing Tips Podcast from Scott Johnson

A useful podcast giving tips on how to better market your blog, download it from:

http://fuzzyblog.com/podcasts/f-76-sc-blog-marketing-101.mp3

Entrepreneur Magazine eBiz Show

We're always on the look out for good podcasts to listen to whilst we work. We've just seen this one, and we'll have a listen shortly:

http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/
Entrepreneur-Magazine-eBiz-Show.html

US Affiliate Marketing Company Joins Inc 500

Pepperjam (http://www.pepperjamsearch.com/), a company that acts as both an affiliate as well as managing affiliate programs, has made the 2006 Inc. 500 List, which represents the fastest growing privately held businesses in the United States. The company also provides search engine marketing and online media buying services.

Original Post by Shawn Collins

Google Launches Office Suite

Google has launched the first elements of its upcoming Office suite, attacking what is a $12 billion/year Microsoft revenue stream:

https://www.google.com/a/

Full article at TechCrunch UK:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/27/
google-makes-its-move-office-20/

Video Learning from videojug.com

videojug.com aims to create a place where you can find and share advice, wisdom and know-how through the medium of web video. We think it's very cool and will be keeping an eye on it.

Starbucks Economics

Why US Starbucks will sell you a cheaper, better cappuccino if you ask for it:

http://www.slate.com/id/2133754/

Learn Ruby on Rails from Google Video

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=ruby+on+rails

Google Maps Mania

An unofficial blog tracking mashups using Google Maps:

http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/

Great podcast on business start ups and php

Scott Johnson has some entertaining and informative podcasts on business startups and php coding:

http://fuzzyblog.com/podcasts/?type=html

Tailrank.com Memetracker

Tailrank.com is a memetracker which finds the hottest posts from thousands of blogs so you don't have to.

New Official Google Webmaster Blog

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Video on Google Webmaster Tools

Matt Cutts explains Google Webmaster Tools:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4526554928294588907

Embed Flash with Javascript

Changes in IE mean users may see a "Do you want to install ActiveX Control" message if you have embedded your Flash using the traditional Object / Embed tag technique. With SWFObject you can embed Flash with JavaScript instead, and the below article tells you how:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/swfobject.html

Yahoo! US Does Home Valuations

http://realestate.yahoo.com/Homevalues

Free instant home value estimates and comparable home valuations for millions of homes in the U.S. Interesting.

Pixsy.com Image Search Engine

Voted one of Time Magazine's 50 coolest websites of 2006, check out Pixsy Image search:

http://pixsy.com/

UK Tech Start Ups Blog

Highly successful US blog TechCrunch has launched a UK version, which will focus on UK based tech startups:

http://uk.techcrunch.com/

New Affiliate Marketing Podcast from Fraser

Fraser has been interviewing key figures from the UK affiliate marketing industry. His podcasts are a great introduction for anyone thinking of getting into affiliate marketing. There's a new one up at:

http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/interview-with-jess-luthi.html

... we'll be listening shortly.

Google Webmaster Tools

Are here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/
sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

We hope to check them out shortly.

Mega Income for Top Bloggers

An article from CNN Money tells us how much top blog sites are making:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/
business2_archive/2006/09/01/8384325/

Cool Internet TV Experimental Site - neave.tv

Even our grandmothers know that the internet will replace conventional TV in a few years time, and neave.tv is the first site we've seen that really gives an inkling of what's coming. The site is sweeeeeeeeet :) Hats off to the developer.

Amazon Launched aStores for Easy Affiliate Storefronts

Amazon has created a new tool which allows affiliates to easily create their own Amazon affiliate storefront in minutes. For further info see:

http://www.affiliatetip.com/blog/archives/
amazons_astore_creates_affiliate_storefronts.html

http://astore.amazon.com/demostore-20

Pharmaceutical Companies to Ramp Up Online Ad Spend

Original article from Advertising Age:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=111197

Commentary from SEO Book:

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001799.shtml

... but are web publishers the best people to be providing information on medication?

What Makes Blogs Work

Seth Godin tells us blogs work when they are based on:
Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness
Controversy
(maybe Utility if you want six).

We probably have some work to do ...

3 Things to Help Google Trust You

A quick article from Site Reference. We'd say this also applies to e-commerce store owners, i.e. if you want to try and sell something, it's important that you provide clear contact details to your visitors:

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Search-Engines/
3-Things-to-Help-Google-Trust-You.html

Affiliate Summit Video: Wil Reynolds on SEO

Keen to learn about SEO? There's a Google video that might be of interest available through the following link:

http://www.affiliatetip.com/blog/archives/
affiliate_summit_video_wil_reynolds_on_seo.html

Free ASP.net Scripts

We heard about the two sites below on hanselminutes.com, and they might be good for free ASP.net scripts (we've yet to check them out, but you can't argue with free, can you):

http://www.projectdistributor.net/

http://www.sliver.com/dotnet/index.aspx

Christmas Reminder

If you're in affiliate marketing, you should be thinking about Christmas around about now.

Snakes On A Plane

So, the latest Hollywood mega release is Snakes On A Plane. This reminds us of the Ronseal Advert "Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin", i.e. we guess there's a plane, and there are snakes on it. It's a good job that snake catcher extraordinaire Steve Irwin wasn't one of the passengers, otherwise it wouldn't have been a particularly exciting film.

Getting Excited about Free Hit Counters

You know you're a geek when you get excited about adding free hit counters to your site. We've just done it here at VentStation.com and over at WebRef.eu, and we've made them publically accessible so all you fellow geeks (and we know you like looking at stats) can enjoy them too. The sites are really just starting out, but hopefully we'll see numbers rising shortly.

If you want a free hit counter, statcounter.com looks to be the site (just don't get too excited okay).

Thumbs Up To the Bloglines Blog Reader

If you like reading blogs (and we do), you'll want to use a Blog Reader app. We really like the Bloglines.com service for this. One really neat feature is that you can easily share your "Blogroll" which will show other people what you are reading. For instance, ours is here:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/ventstation

Another thing it allows is for you to paste a script so that your Blogroll is available from one of your web pages, for example:

http://www.webref.eu/interesting-blogs.php

We think this is neat.

Web's 15th Birthday on 6th August 2006

We missed this story, but we've just heard the web turned 15 on the 6th August 2006. The BBC has a nice timeline:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5243862.stm

PHP Image Resize Resources

We've just added a new page on PHP image resize resources.

site-reference.com Newsletter

We're big fans of site-reference.com and their newsletter, because they send you really useful articles on internet marketing like this one:

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/5-Free-Things-You-Can-Do-to-Get-More-Traffic-Immediately.html

Useful Stuff Post 1!

Okay, okay, just because we want to make good on our promises in our earlier post, here's our first "useful" post. If you're interested in running an internet business, the first thing you need to work out is what people are searching for. Well you lucky people, we've got a whole load of keyword suggestion tools for you here:

http://www.webref.eu/keyword-suggestion-tools.php

Don't forget to let us know what we've missed.

VentStation.com goes commercial

We're changing the use of this blog to bring you resources related to such exciting topics as search engine optimisation, domain name trading and link exchange resources. You'll have to excuse the earlier posts, which seem to be mainly focused on our fascination with ITV's Love Island. We've now decided that VentStation.com is a unique enough name to use for our blog intended for internet business owners, particularly those involved in affiliate marketing. You can also view our collection of web development resources at webref.eu.

We hope that this will be two way traffic, and we really need you to contribute to help make our resources really useful. So, don't be shy, leave a comment here, contact us through http://www.webref.eu/enquiry.aspx or comment us at http://www.myspace.com/ventstation and tell us about the really cool resources we've missed.

Thanks for reading, and we hope to drag ourselves away from our own affiliate marketing activities to bring you some good stuff more frequently from now on!!

Time Release Top 50 Websites for 2006

http://www.time.com/time/2006/50coolest/index.html

Of these, we've used YouTube, Phone Scoop and Myspace. Notable by its absence is social bookmarking site del.icio.us, which we think is pretty cool too.

Will Bianca Resist Calum in the Love Shack?

So, Bianca Gascoigne was chosen to spend time in the Love Shack with Calum Best. Will she be able to resist Calum's charms? We reckon probably not. Calum has already been telling Bianca how she has great legs and how sexy she is, and given how she has had a crush on the guy for a long time, we think it is only a matter of time before she gives in.

Lee's Outburst on Love Island

Despite it receiving poor viewing figures, we're really enjoying the current series of Love Island. We were however a bit worried when Lee was in the diary room after receiving the bad news from Colleen that they could only be just friends. To say that Lee took this news badly would be a bit of a understatement, and he proceeded to trash the diary room in an outburst that might be expected from a wayward rock star rather than a Mummy's boy Hollyoaks actor. We were just glad that he didn't swing the microphone towards the back of the diary room, where there was a large fish tank ...

ITV Chief Executive Stands Down

Charles Allen has quit as head of ITV in the face of falling ad revenue. The channel has been facing increasing competition for advertising spend from digital TV, and the reality programmes championed by Mr Allen, such as Love Island, have had disappointing viewing figures. (Personally we're fans of Love Island, but there we go.)

More from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5240228.stm

Radio One in Newquay

Radio One has spent the weekend in Newquay as part of their Six Weeks of Summer campaign, see:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/summer06/newquay/index.shtml

We meanwhile have spent the weekend working on the computer. We're going wrong somewhere ...