These days, Google seems to be everywhere. They are attempting to take on the mobile phone industry with their “Android” mobile operating system, and they’ve even begun dabbling in radio and television advertising of web-based businesses. But so far, the big G has mostly stayed out of the entertainment business — that is, until now.
The New York Times is reporting that Google has signed an agreement with Seth McFarlane, the creator of Fox’s wildly popular ‘Family Guy’ animated television series. According to the Times, Google will fund and distribute a new original animated series online called “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.”
The series will be distributed to thousands of targeted web sites online, and monetized with Google’s Adsense contextual advertising. The ads will be distributed via video “preroll” commercials, and the sites chosen to receive the new series will be a highly targeted based on the demographics of McFarlane’s other popular animations: Family Guy and American Dad.
The Times article also notes that McFarlane is working directly with advertisers to create original ad spots that will run during the episodes. So far, Google will not reveal who the major advertisers are for the project, only saying that they are among the largest Adsense advertisers online.
Reportedly, McFarlane will receive a straight percentage of the ad revenue generated from the new series, though no exact figures have been released from either Google or the Family Guy production team.
Unlike McFarlane’s Fox network programs, the online cartoon series will consist of “micro episodes,” said to be approximately 2 minutes each. McFarlane has compared the short animations to “animated versions of the one frame cartoons you might see in the New Yorker, only edgier.”
But diehard Family Guy fans should not get their hopes up of seeing any familiar characters in the new series. McFarlane’s contractual obligations with Fox make it unlikely we’ll be seeing Stewie, Brian, Peter or Quagmire from the Family Guy series.
For Google, the new series represents a dramatic move in a new direction for the company: content creation. So far, Google has profited from monetizing other people’s content online with their Adsense contextual advertising, but the company has not ventured into creating their own online entertainment. Experts believe the deal with Seth McFarlane represents a first tentative step by Google into the entertainment industry.
More and more, the computer is becoming the source of news, entertainment and educational programming — Google is wise to jump on the bandwagon now, before the major broadcast networks have a chance to completely monopolize online entertainment.
When Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. purchased MySpace three years ago, many Internet experts believed it was just a matter of time until the multinational figured out how to properly monetize the popularity and huge user base of the social networking site.
MySpace now has over 118 million users worldwide, but to date, News Corp. has been unable to monetize the site in any significant way. In fact, shares of News Corp. fell 5% in April after the company announced that its projected revenue target for MySpace (an estimated $1 billion profit) would not be met this year. Perhaps because of this most recent disappointment, and its effect on the company’s stock, MySpace is now being redesigned, with an eye toward increased advertising, including adding a splash page on the site’s homepage to advertise big-budget Hollywood films and other major industry players.
News Corp. has announced that the redesigned MySpace will debut in early fall, and the homepage will now include an expanded search tool, video player and redesigned navigation bar. There will also be a variety of cosmetic adjustments made to the site, designed to increase the appeal of user pages, while seamlessly incorporating relevant contextual advertising.
But some analysts believe that News Corp’s goal of one billion in revenue annually from MySpace is overly ambitious. In fact, despite all the hype, the jury is still out on whether social networking sites can actually become profitable “cash cows.” MySpace, Facebook and even Bebo all have announced ambitious business plans for monetizing their sites, but so far there is little proof that they are paying off.
If you simply consider the amount of Web traffic a site like MySpace receives, it would seem easy to monetize the site, and create a huge recurring source of income with relatively little maintenance and infrastructure. In April, for example, MySpace claimed approximately 150 million users online; and statistics show that the average user spent several hours on the site.
But when it comes to Web businesses, traffic does not always equal money. Both MySpace and Facebook have struggled to come up with user-acceptable advertising schemes to monetize their sites. One of the biggest problems is the difficulty in selling contextual advertising on personal profile pages. Both MySpace and Facebook consist of hundreds of thousands of personal pages; some are quite elaborate and well designed, while others resemble a worn-out high school gym locker.
The challenge for MySpace (and their competitors) is to effectively advertise on personal profile pages, without alienating the site’s members. It’s a fine line to walk, and News Corp. is quickly discovering that the sales techniques that work in broadcasting and old media, do not always apply online.
When you own and operate your own blog, there is a daily battle to find new ways to build links and drive traffic to your site. There are many ways to accomplish this, from article submission to the buying of links, but are there other non-standard tools to use? Part of the fun of running your own website is finding new and interesting ways to market your blog. Sometimes some of your best marketing moves start out as things you wouldn’t normally think of. You can actually use Google’s YouTube video site to drive traffic to your blog as well.
The first thing you do to use YouTube to increase traffic to your blog is to film a creative video that is somehow related to the subject matter you write about in your blog. In doing this, focus on humor first although for some niches a how-to video or other type of instruction content could work just as well. You don’t need a video that will take the world by storm, although that would be nice, but something that will hold peoples interest will do just fine.
Once you have the video made, you need to run it through your video editing software and add a watermark. A watermark is simply a logo or text rendition of your blog’s URL that is placed over the corner of the video and stays there through the entire run of the video. Most video editing software can handle this task fairly easily, if yours cannot there are free and low cost digital video editing software available from various sources online. Once your video is watermarked, then every time someone views it they will also be viewing your blog’s URL.
Once your video looks just the way you would like it too, you can take the next step. Upload your video to the YouTube site, but when doing so make sure you take advantage of some of the variable information available to recently uploaded videos. The first thing to do is come up with a catchy and memorable title for your video. Now, use 5-10 tags that relate in some way to your keywords so that they will perform some of the marketing of your video for you. Finally, there is space to input a description of your video. You will want to try to accomplish multiple things with this description space. What you are trying to do is come up with a description that accurately describes your video but at the same time uses the keywords of your blog and mentions your blog’s URL.
By doing all these things you will end up with a video that is highly ranked for its keywords in search engine results and that broadcasts your blog’s URL to everyone that views it. YouTube and other video uploading sites can be used this way to successfully market your blog to people who may not stumble across it based on standard website marketing techniques.
Ever wonder how to determine which keywords to use to direct the most traffic to your web site? Wordtracker is a great tool to help you make that determination.
So you created your website and submitted it for indexing at various search sites. Now you sit and wait for all those visitors to arrive. But how did you decide which keywords to focus on in your website content? These keywords are vital to ensuring that people find you when searching the web for relevant terms or phrases.
Net surfers are probably not discovering or searching for your site the way you thought they would. Ask someone outside of your business (like your customers!) what words they would use in a search window when looking for your site (or for the things offered at your site). When you have a few prime choices to work with, visit Wordtracker.
Wordtracker lets you input a chosen keyword and then provides you with a list of alternative, related keywords. You can then take each alternative (or your original) and get an estimate of the amount of traffic (or “hits”) you would expect to receive from each keyword over a 24-hour period as a result of people searching for this word or phrases containing this word. That’s assuming you are in the top results for the relevant searches at the major search sites.
You can also select one of these words or phrases and find out how many other sites are using it as well, sites you will be competing with for those top search-results positions. You can view the results immediately and have them sent to you as email.
If you have an idea of the likely traffic a keyword might bring and the number of other sites using this keyword, you can better judge which words to focus on at your site. The more popular a keyword, the more traffic it will bring, but the more likely there is to be competition - meaning it will be hard to get your site in the top search results.
Ergo, you want to find the most popular, relevant keywords with the least competition. Not easy!
The site offers two versions of the service: the free trial version and the full subscription version.
The free trial will find 15 related words and phrases for each keyword you look at. You can then take each keyword and the service will present the relevant statistics for the word and a handful of search phrases using this word. Competitor info is only drawn from one search engine, AltaVista.
The full subscription ranges in price from US$19.95 for one week’s access to US$197 for a full year. What do you get with the full subscription? Wordtracker will find up to 300 related terms (including misspellings) for each suggested keyword, and then a further 500 variations per search. The data is also drawn from a larger database and more search sites (so you can identify the most promising keywords for different search sites, not just AltaVista).
The best approach would be to test the results from the trial version before making a financial investment. If you are going to choose a full year subscription, you must be willing to utilize the service at least a few times per month and make the appropriate changes at your website to reap the potential rewards.
Linkbaiting is an online strategy to attract links from other web sites to yours. The idea is to use some type of compelling content on your web site that other webmasters will want to link to. Those who perfect the art of using linkbait often see hundreds or thousands of links to their site from a single unique article, image, video or other type of content.
Why are backlinks so important? The more links you get to your web site, the more traffic (surfers) you will get as well. And the more traffic you get, obviously, the more money you can make. And it’s not just webmasters who are using linkbait; bloggers have jumped on the linkbaiting bandwagon, and even YouTube and MySpace users have gotten in on the act.
So if you have a web site, blog, or even a MySpace page, how can you attract lots of links (and Web surfers) to your page using linkbait? Here’s how it works:
The most common kind of linkbait is the humble article. Articles that work best as linkbait have a few similarities. First, they must be current. Second, they need to have an air of controversy or immediacy about them. And finally, a successful linkbait article must be unique. When these three parameters fall into place, the results can be amazing, and you can wind up getting an avalanche of traffic to your web site, blog or MySpace page.
A good example of linkbait is in the now ubiquitous Apple iPhone. In the lead up to the iPhone’s launch, there was intense interest in the phone, so any article that mentioned it had at least some appeal.
But the best iPhone articles, that went on to become great linkbait, were not just about the upcoming launch of the iPhone; they also had something controversial about them–perhaps an outrageous claim about an iPhone feature, or a rumor about a feature it would not include.
And of course, the best iPhone linkbait articles were also unique. After all, it’s no good simply writing about something that is current and controversial if everyone else is doing the same thing. That’s a sure-fire way to ensure your article gets buried amongst an avalanche of related content online.
Of course if you’re not a fantastic writer, you can always find a writer online to help you write your linkbait article. If you really want to attract the greatest number of the backlinks to your site, it is imperative that you have a professionally written article that is current, controversial and unique.
This combination has proven to be irresistible as linkbait, and can even attract links from the “big boys” online, such as Yahoo, CNN or other established portals.
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I bet you’re wondering just what the term “bum marketing” is, aren’t you? It sounds like it might even be unethical or blackhat, but I assure you, it’s not! It’s a perfectly ethical way to make extra money on the internet, and in this article, I’ll go over the basics to get you started on the track to earning extra cash using bum marketing techniques.
The term “bum marketing” was originally coined due to the fact that it’s so easy, and free, that even a bum could do it. Bum marketing, in a nutshell and in its most basic form, includes the following steps:
- Write an article about a specific niche or area with relatively low competition.
- Plan to submit the article to a popular article directory.
- Include a link to an affiliate product in your author’s resource box.
- Have the said link point to a page within your site, or another landing page with a review of the affiliate product and the affiliate link to it.
- Cross fingers, and wait for Google to pick up the article.
- When people search Google for what you wrote about, they get sent to your page.
- Hopefully, the visitor reads the review, clicks the affiliate link and buys the product or service, earning you a commission.
The above steps are a very basic outline of what bum marketing involves, and many, many pages could be written on this highly popular form of internet marketing.
The key to success with bum article marketing is writing articles that involve a niche/product/service that has the least amount of competition as possible. This may be easier said than done, but every day, someone is releasing something new. Be the first to talk about it, sign up for their affiliate program, write an article on it, and submit to Google. The reason that articles get picked up in Google (besides the fact that Google loves unique content) is because the bigger article directories (like ezinearticles.com) have high PageRanks and depending on what you wrote about, can usually muscle the article right up the ladder when it comes to search results.
Example scenario: I find someone that wrote an ebook that shows you how to breed “exotic widget fish.” The first thing I would do, assuming they have an affiliate program, is sign up as an affiliate, and start pumping out articles on the techniques to breeding exotic widget fish. Utilizing my existing site (if you don’t have one, sign up for a free blogger.com blog) I would write a few reviews on the widget fish ebook, and include affiliate links to the actual ebook sales page. I would submit my article to a big article directory, and in my resource box I would include a link to my page that reviews the ebook. After a few days, my article would appear on the first page of Google when people search for information on “exotic widget fish,” and with any luck, they would see my site, click on it, read the positive reviews on the ebook, click the affiliate link, and buy it!
You would be shocked if I told you how easy this was. If you can pump out 3-5 articles a week, utilize the above steps, you could honestly start making a terrific residual income that could last for years to come.
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There are lots of article submission websites that could give you the boost that you need for your own websites. These websites are created for the sole purpose of informing people about a specific topic. Even though we don’t know what the true credentials of these writers are, we trust that these articles were well researched and somehow they could give us more street knowledge that we hope for. At the same time, they are also there to give the readers an idea about the writer. It’s some sort of a primer of what will they see in your website.
That’s why when you write an article for these sites, don’t give out everything. You may think this is quite selfish but think of it this way: why would someone go to a site that will only repeat the information? It’s a total waste of time for your end to give a well detailed article in this type of article repositories. When you’re planning to write something, just give the readers a hint of what will be available on your website. For example, instead of giving them all the great sites about a certain topic, why not give them a third of what you have written in your site and tell them to go to your site for complete info? It will even save you time since you don’t have to write a very long article twice.
Another great thing on not giving away everything that you know is you’ll be able to concentrate in one topic only. The topic could be anything that you would like to talk about as long as it’s not too personal. Remember that you’re not writing in a blog, but you’re writing an article that’s supposed to inform your readers regarding a certain point that you support. One hint: talk about something that’s quite the contrary of popular beliefs. It’s just one topic, but it could actually stir a conversation with other members and your readers. Be sure to follow it up in your blog to ensure more visitors to your site.
When you’re writing, don’t write like you’re creating a book report or a dissertation. Too many words in an article are really not appreciated by your reader. Although readers could tell that you’re well versed in something, try to tone it down. Imagine that you’re speaking with your neighbor and explaining to him or her something really complicated but interesting. Remember that the readers are there to look for practical information and not a lesson on how to figure out really complicated concepts.
One of the great additions on some of the known article submission websites is the resource box. More than anything else; be sure to write a little bit something about yourself and the website you’re creating or closely affiliated to. Since you’re writing something that will stir up their interest, your website will provide additional information. In doing so, more visitors will come to your site. All these are happening because of the resource box that complements the information that you have written in your article submission website.
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Viral marketing is the use of social networks for advertising purposes. It is most often mentioned and recognized as word-of-mouth advertising. The characteristics of viral marketing are not hard to spot at all. When something is being spread virally, it spreads very, very quickly. And today, with the Internet at its prime, viral marketing is an even more effective tool. News sometimes even break faster on the Internet than it does on the TV!
Why is viral marketing so attractive to the small guys as well as the big companies? For one, it takes little to no money to execute a viral marketing campaign. The techniques that are used can be applied and adaptable to almost any business plan – online or offline.
Tell a Friend
This method prompts and encourages people to pass whatever the message is along. Chain letters are a good example. In addition, the “tell-a-friend” or “send-to-friend” boxes that are also common on many websites today. Friends tell friends cool things that they come across which makes this method so effective.
Referrals
Whenever someone tells their friend or family about your product or service - they are given a reward for it. Following that, the person that they tell about it must take action in order for this to be effective.
Publicity Stunt
This is designed to create controversy. It gets people to start talking about the issue. This can usually either go really smooth or extremely bad, backfiring on its original purpose.
Social Networking Websites
These are websites that allows users to share information and interests with each other. For example: Digg.com users share news that they find interesting; MySpace.com users share their favorite music and interests; YouTube.com users share their favorite videos; and del.icio.us users share their favorite bookmarked websites. Those are just a few examples of how viral marketing works in an online environment.
Pay-per-click represents a simple negotiation system between a web publisher and an advertiser. internet. In PPC advertisers do not pay for the total number of impressions or views but pay only when a visitor comes to your website by clicking on the advertisement. Pay-per-Click (PPC) is part of every web businesses life. It is has a lot to do with the way that online marketing is progressing, and over the years it has replaced banner, affiliates advertising which was the norm in the past. PPC is part of everybody’s
life now.
PPC became very popular with the start of goto.com which now is Overture. Now it has grown many-fold with hundreds of companies which provide general and other advertising opportunities. Pay-per-click has become even bigger than pay-per-impression advertising. The following are currently available PPC options.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords is by far the most popular option these days. AdWords is a Google service that started with displaying ads next to the results given by the search query. Google then extended their PPC program to include contextual ads which includes Google AdSense, which allowd even small publishers to display contextual ads on their websites. These contextual ads are basically the AdWords results.
The Google AdWords algorithm depends upon various alogorithms which mainly go by the following two thumb rules: i) the clickthrough of the advert and ii) the amount that the advertisers specifies per each
click. Adverts that have clickthrough rates lower than 0.5% (approx) are classified as untargeted and are automatically removed by the system the clickthrough results refer only to search engine impressions and not to the websites which use contextual advertisements as the clickthrough rates for Adsense can be much lower till about 0.002%.
There is a $5 activation fees which are applicable when you open an AdWords account. The minimum cost per click in AdWords is one cent, but for competitive keywords the value can reach very high values (up to $100). These are premium keywords and can be exploited to generate false revenue for the publishers. As you can see 100 dollars is not a small amount. Google AdWords can offer you large amount of targeted traffic as it is the worlds most widely used search engine with millions of users every day. However, the
large competition in AdWords keywords and the small conversion rates for contextual advertising make its use forbidding for many small business owners. Site-targeted ads require a minimum CPM price of US$0.25, per 1000 impressions.
Overture (Now Yahoo! Search marketing)
Overture is in a sense the company that started all this or at least made it popular. It has currently lost a lot of ground due to the introduction of Adwords, but the acquisition of Overture by Yahoo! about two years ago and the adoption of contextual advertising (Context Match) programs and now the Yahoo! Publisher Network, which is in the Beta stage at the moment have revived the services offered by Overture. Overture results are currently being displayed in Yahoo!, MSN, Dogpile, AltaVista, CNET, NBCI, and many more. With Overture you can bid for rankings and also choose the description and title of your websiite. You can control your bids at all times and change them, based on the quality of your results. Particularly handy is the Search Term Suggestion Tool, which shows you how often people search for a particular word or phrase. Minimum bid for Overture is 10 cents per click but there is also a clause where you need to utilize at least $20 from your funds. It takes about 5 business days to get listed. Bidding and displaying of the results is simpler in Overture than in AdWords. The results are displayed in order of the bid size and there is no ‘popularity’ factor as in AdWords. There is an advantage in Overture of being ‘top bidder’ for your keywords as the top bidder gets more prominence in more websites and search engines than the lowest bidders. Naturally this means that the expenses of the bidders in Overture are quite high ? but not as high as in AdWords. Keyword rates are comparable with AdWords and there are hundreds of advertisers that pledge by Overture.
Miva (originally known as Findwhat.com)
Obviously much smaller than either Overture or Adwords, but Miva is a very good alternative to the search engine PPC and contextual PPC. Miva.com distributes your keyword text ads throughout a distribution partner network of hundreds of high-traffic websites including large search engines such as CNET’s Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, MetaCrawler, Dogpile and Microsoft Internet Explorer Autosearch. They also partner with specialty sites serving niche markets in order to drive the most targeted traffic to your website. Minimum bid is again five cents per click but click rates are much lower here than Adwords or Overture. Unfortunately the number of clicks is much lower as well, so you will not get as much traffic out of Miva as you would out of Overture or AdWords. In order to activate the Miva account you need to place a deposit of $25 which is used for the first clicks of your campaign. Now there is also a Miva (UK) which can be used by United Kingdom advertisers and publishers.
LookSmart
LookSmart will do a deep categorization of your web site, in return for a per click charge of generally between 15 to 75 cents for every visitor that they send to you, with those in more competitive markets paying higher fees. The program has a $1,000 minimum spend per month, with a three month minimum, so this isn’t aimed at small business. In addition to this, LookSmart will now also give all your listings a ranking boost, a significant change than from its old program. This only happens within LookSmart.com and sites that rebrand LookSmart’s exact listings. Results appear on MSN, AltaVista, iWon, Time Warner, Prodigy, Juno, Netscape, Qwest, Go2Net, Mamma.com, plus Inktomi and their entire network.
Kanoodle
Kanoodle is also an alternative and is on the same par as Miva. It has partnered with NetZero, DogPile, CNET, Metacrawler and Turbofind. Minimum bid is again five cents per click and click rates are similar to those from Miva. Again the amount of traffic you will expect out of Miva can definitely not be compared to the traffic from Adwords or Overture but the results for specialized keywords or for keywords which have a lot of competition in Adwords or Overture can be extremely good. Your Kanoodle.com account also allows your listings to be seen on search engines and sites like Galaxy.com, 37.com as well as 10,000 other search enabled sites!
7Search
7Search has a minimum bid of one penny and require a minimum $25 deposit to start bidding. If paying by credit, your bids will be live immediately upon submitting your credit card number unless you are from outside the US, in which case your bid prices will be activated upon credit card approval. Services offered to advertisers include immediate e-mail notification when you are outbid for the top ranking on a keyword, a keyword generator tool, and a 1:1 banner exchange program. 7Search has over 30 million searches per month. Search results appear in 7Search affiliate network and over 35% of search engines in English speaking countries.
Pay-per-click advertising is remarkable in the fact that it allows for the easiest possible tracking of its results in ways that even a beginner can follow and he/she can understand the progress of his/her current PPC campaigns, correct the ones that seem to be going badly and improve the ones that are already giving excellent results.
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