What was that about?

So that post was a little strange and didn’t really work. But what was I trying to do?

I have a couple of other websites that I have talked about before. I have links to them from this post and other places. Incase you missed them, here they are again:

www.bsilverstein.info
www.as-seen-on-youtube.com

www.politicsofamillennial.blogspot.com
www.asoyoutube.blogspot.com
www.always-free-shipping.com

So why show those again? I am putting this websites and links on this blog post because I have found in the past that if I post something on my blog with a link to my other websites, I get thousands of page views and visits on my other sites. And here’s the best part, its because people are clicking on them!

If I have links to my other sites anywhere on the web, that helps my organic search on sites like Google and Yahoo. So that means if people search for keywords that I have in my meta tags or keywords which are relevant for my sites, my site will appear higher in the search rankings. This is of course simple SEO stuff, but fun to play with.

Try it out for your site and see if you have the same success!

Official Google Blog: Hitting 40 languages

Official Google Blog: Hitting 40 languages

Social Networks & Free Advertising

There is a lot of talk these days about social networking and how it is changing the face of communications. Many small companies are trying to break into social networks for free or cheap advertising and promotion of their website or company. But for all the talk, is it any cheaper or any more cost effective than traditional advertising?

The problem with advertising and promoting on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster or any others, is that you are hitting a market that is already saturated with ads on a daily basis and are very good at ignoring them. Look at MySpace for example. The site is jam packed with ads that cost a lot of money and for what? So people can ignore them and get down to what to they really want to see? I’m not saying the ads don’t work at all, but maybe they’re a little over rated. Facebook offers a free page for your company which is great, but you need to have friends to invite to your page or you need to advertise it. The advertising generally comes in the form of a pay-per-click and the suggested cost-per-click can be higher than Google costs. But maybe just being on Facebook is enough to make you “cool” so you may have a higher ROI. But is their any hard evidence to this? I would like to see it because I’m struggling with the decision of whether or not to adveritise on these sites.

I just launched a new website this week, www.as-seen-on-youtube.com. The site is an open forum for people to post links of cool videos they have found on YouTube, MySpace, Google, MetaCafe or any other online site. It is free and simple and I make money from Google Ads on my site. But to get people to the site in the first place I have to promote it. But I have a very small budget. (Basically pocket change). I am on Facebook and MySpace doing what I can for free and have set up Google ads and MSN AdCenter ads, but those only produce so many clicks.

Now this may work for me and may be enough for my site to grow (I hope) but that doesn’t mean it works for everyone. A viral campaign doesn’t work for every age group. I am working with some people on a launching a new product and they want to implement a viral campaign because it is cheaper and cooler than regular advertising. While this may work a little, the target market for this product is above the age of 35 and mostly women. This market is not online chatting and viewing pictures and videos. So if we were to go ahead with a viral campaign, the little money we do spend could be a waste.

But then again, the fastest growing segment of the social networking realm is ages 25+, but this is because anyone younger already has an account! What do you do? Does anyone have a suggestion? If it helps with promoting my site, I would be willing to pay for good ideas. How can I reach 20+ million people cheaply and fast? I don’t know yet, but if I figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you know!

What did Yahoo do now?!

So if you’ve been on the internet at all in the last few months, or even turned on a news cannel on TV, you’ve heard about the Yahoo fiasco and ‘fightin’ words from Carl Ichan. Well as in my last post, I talked about “Why Yahoo is F**ked” and explained most of the problems facing them and few suggestions for fixing them. Well just wait to hear what’s happing now.

Yahoo signed a deal with Google (their BIGGEST COMPETITOR) to show Google ads on Yahoo search results. The deal is that Yahoo can choose what to show, where and when. Well great, they laid the seeds for Google to start taking over more features and eventually take over the whole company. But anyway, this week I got more news about Yahoo pay-per-click account. They are raising the minimum bids for most of my keywords! What?! Not only is this unnecessary, the bids are HIGHER than the minimum bids on Google for the same keywords. Here are some examples of what I’m facing:

Keyword: “debbie meyer green bags” My old bid: $0.20 The new minimum: $0.30

Keyword: “food storage” My old bid: $0.15 The new minimum: $0.42

Keyword: “carpet stain removal” My old bid” $0.32 The new minimum: $0.95

So I am a little ticked off to be frank about it. And what is my response? Bye-Bye Yahoo. Why spend money for a program that does not show anywhere near the same ROI as Google and is owned by a company that seems to be doing everything wrong? I’m going to close my Yahoo account and open an Account with MSN AdCenter. Earlier this year, Yahoo made up about 19% of all search engine usage in the US and MSN was about 12.5%. The way things are going, I expect to see Yahoo’s share fall and MSN’s grow. So I’m going to MSN (and of course keeping Google Adwords).

This is really a shame because Yahoo has a lot of great features that I like and think are important for them to stay competitive, such as Yahoo Answers. A great resource and asset to the company that keeps thousands of users on Yahoo for long periods of time. The email isn’t as clean as Gmail, but they recently redid the design, but while doing so did not make a dramatic enough change to scare away the users that were used to the old design. This is extremely important and shows that Yahoo is, (or was) trying to keep their old customers while at the same time trying to attract new ones.

Yahoo is not down and out just yet, but they are down and it will take a lot to pick them back up. I just can’t wait to see what they do next so I can post about that.

What’s the next step in E-mail Campaigns?

Before you get the wrong idea, I love e-mail campaigns! I think they are a great and inexpensive way to drive sales. But across the board, companies are seeing that campaigns that used to bring in 30 or 40,000 dollars are now bringing in 7 or 8,000. Studies are showing that imbedding video in the e-mail or having links to video can increase conversation rates. But that doesn’t work for every market. Older customers may have no interest in watching video online and customers with a slow dial-up connection will have trouble opening it, which may cause you to loose customers! So what can we do to increase sales and keep customers?

The title of this post may be mis-leading, but it’s long as it is and I didn’t want to write “How can we make e-mail campaigns more effective and what is the next steep?” But that’s really what I’m talking about. E-mail campaigns aren’t going away anytime soon, but the problem is that almost every site asks for your e-mail address so that they can send you information and consumers are getting overloaded with e-mails. Many people now have spam blockers that can stop even ligament e-mails, and some are even on national “Do not e-mail” lists like the “Do not call” list. So for the few who will get your e-mail and SEE it, how can it stand out?

The first thing people will see is the title. It is important to keep this short and to the point so that when people are skimming their inbox, they can tell what your e-mail is right away. This is more important today more than ever before with smart phones. People check their e-mails with almost any phone now and the text is very small and short. They must be able to see your e-mail immediately if you want them to buy. If they don’t know what it is, they might just delete it. Years ago I had the idea of texting coupons to people’s cell phones. Some companies are doing things similar to this, but not exactly as I had in mind. Today, over three years after I first did my school project, I think cell phones are the next steep.

Instead of signing up for an Opt-In email on a website, wouldn’t it be nice to sign up for Opt-In text messages? Now this was originally intended for brick and mortar stores, but it can be easily adopted for online stores. If a customers shops at your store a lot, they are probably already on the e-mail list or mailing lists and get coupons as it is. But it is very easy to forget a coupon when you drive out the store, or have it get lost under a hundred other emails. But no one forgets their cell phone. So why not send the customer a text? They will be sure to get it and always have it on them. You might even get lucky and send it to them while they’re out shopping or at the mall and they can immediately go to your store and buy something. Also, if they get a text message, they are almost forced to view it before deleting it, where an e-mail can be deleted automatically. The cost for a text message campaign as large as an email campaign may be higher, but the principle behind it is a higher conversion rate which would mean the cost per conversion would be lower, or the same, resulting in higher sales and a higher ROI.

So are we going to see this soon? I work at company that has a very old target market and a cell phone campaign wouldn’t work because our customers don’t have cell phones. But for many other retailers, I think this could work. So what the hell, give it a shot and let me know how it works. If you want more information about my DECA project from years ago, send me an email. My website is: http://www.bsilverstein.info/.

Thanks!