A Marketer's Love of Gadgets, Widgets, & Mashups

I just used Parallels to install Windows Vista on my MacBook Pro, and I noticed that by default the Windows software had gadgets on the desktop. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! are all pushing gadgets.

In order to to make it easy to navigate the sea of gadgets, and with the hope of becoming the default provider, many of these companies are showing popularity or distribution statistics of gadgets and videos, while also making it easy to syndicate them and easy to consume them (via personalized home pages, desktop widgets, site inclusion, and sidebar widgets).

This means 2 things for publishers: a cheap way to get huge distribution and brand loyalty, and easy access to human filtered interesting content.

Today Freebase launched, which is attempting to create a useful semantic web of human knowledge, similar to Google Base. As upstarts and established companies fight for distribution and trust more information will be publicly available from third party sites. Marketers can use toolbars, statistics, APIs, custom topical search engines, Yahoo! Pipes, widgets, and other mashups to create and package useful niche content and tools by aggregating data from these sources.

Some people are using the APIs to provide a more useful version of the original, like Alexaholic, while others are focused on creating profitable ad networks such as Auction Ads. One of my affiliates recently created this mashup. You can keep up with mashups and widgets at Mashable and Sexy Widget.

ebay
amazon

Google Checkout Logos on AdSense Ads

When Google introduced their AdSense network they not only created an ad syndication network, but also a way to syndicate the Google brand. At first it was the cute Ads by Gooooooooooooogle stuff. Then they started marketing Google Checkout heavily by offering $10 off coupons. Then they started syndicating flash and video ads for Gmail, then Google Pack, and now they are placing Google Checkout icons in the AdSense advertiser ads.

It's a nice deal for Google that they smart price some of the inventory down to virtually nothing, then buy it off themselves. Given that they have no real competition could you fault them for doing so? Even classier of them to put ads for their own products inside ads that advertisers are paying for. But their marketing is good enough that nobody cares. Who else could do that?

I Only Want What I Can't Have

I recently got feedback from an SEO Book buyer who stated that their site was not accepted by some directories I recommend. If someone does not accept your site realize that due to their editorial stringency a link from that location is probably worth more than a link from the sites that did accept your site.

  • Buy Relevant Ads: If they didn't accept you because you were way off topic then move on.

  • Look Relevant: If they did not accept you because you were not 100% on target with their niche rewrite your description to make it fit their business better. Perception is reality.
  • Be Credible: If they did not accept you because your site was lacking then invest in change and limit the amount of advertising you show on your content that you are activley marketing (at least while you are actively marketing it).

If you can't buy exposure it is going to be hard to compete with competitors who are already established, leveraging viral marketing, and/or getting free exposure.

What people you don't know think of your site is a quick and cheap source of feedback on how to make it better. If something is important to you do not accept no. If you do accept no, learn why they said no and make something that is easier to say yes to. The same goes for requesting being featured on a site, buying reviews, sending out link requests, asking to be published, etc etc etc.

The Hidden Costs of Distribution

I recently went to a soap shop in downtown San Fransisco called Lush. It is the most expensive soap I have ever seen, and a perfect product for the web. My girlfiriend asked the clerk if they sold online and they said yes, but don't buy Lush soap from Amazon.com.
If you opt into distribution of your product the way to win is to give extras when people buy direct. As a marketing strategy, it is silly to recommend people avoid your distribution partners. Once you give up distribution you move toward being a commodity unless you add extras or are selling a buying experience.

Even companies like Adobe are canibalizing portions of their business to maintain their market position. When considering opting into other networks or doing things that extend your reach and give you more direct control over the conumer experience it is probably best to stay as close to the consumer as possible.

If you are a product on the shelf you have to pay for shelf space. If you own the shelf space you can sell your own product or sell overpriced ads to others.

The Tipping Point for SEO

I think SEO has to be considered mainstream at this point. The media writes about it, many media companies have bought my ebook, government regulated monopolies have bought my ebook, and now there is even a college course on SEO at Rice University.

Why Most Bloggers Don't Get Paid Properly

Many of the people at the top push this bullshit naive altruistic garbage, painting money as evil. And they keep pushing it, because that discussion keeps them at the top by giving them something to talk about and making them the authority. And it gives them ditto heads to prop them up, making it harder for new people to see through the smoke and catch up.

SEO for Firefox Updated

SEO for Firefox has been updated again. It now shows the number of pages from a site that are stuck in the supplemental results.

Here is an old primer on supplemental results, and here is how to find what pages from a site are in the supplemental results.

Spamming StumbleUpon

What was once good content is now considered thin affiliate, lead generation, or low quality information spam. One of the risks of owning a large network of related sites is that as the rules of the game change you must change many sites to stay relevant, especially if your sites are old and were of marginal quality when they launched.

Someone could easily and anonymously spam sites to further make your network look shady. Did Edvisors tag most their network, or did someone else do it for them?

And the interesting thing about potentially perceived spamming is that someone else could have tried to make their network look bad, or they could have just bought ads at StumbleUpon and got bookmarked by some of the independent Stumblers. If it isn't spamming to buy ads and get bookmarked then how could it be spamming if/when you bookmark your own stuff? Ads and content are blending more and more.

New SEO Book Salesletter a Success

I took a while to post this because the AdWords data was too small of a sample set to trust as meaningful data, but from affiliate sales I now can say that the new SEO Book salesletter is a big success. Affilate conversion rates are up, last month I paid out twice as many affiliates as any prior month, and this month looks like it will be beating last month.

Here is the new sales letter and the old sales letter. You can read about the changes Brian Clark made here. I will soon do multivariant testing to further improve the salesletter and sales process.

More Niche SEO Conferences

Recently, in addition to the expansion of Elite Retreat, a couple more smaller niche SEO conferences have been announced. These conferences offer a great value because they allow you to be close to the facilitator. They are like buying under-priced consulting in the form of a conference.

If you are on the other side of the pond you won't want to miss DaveN's SEO Days. In London on the 20th & 21st of March the SEO Days team is holding a hands on two day conference costing £1750 (incl. VAT) per person.

If you are in the New York area check out SEO Class. Stuntdubl, GoodROI, Rae, and Shoemoney are offering a free class for nonprofits on March 23, 2007. On May 27th & 28th they are holding a two day course for businesses. The cost to attend is $2999.

As noted by Lee Odden, with SEO conferences small is the new big. These conferences have already been added to the calendar.

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