Devour The Web

Hey, why build a Web site to hawk your penile enlargement kits or questionable pharmaceuticals? Get with the program - there’s a new way to spam. The Google Docs way!

Talk about optimizing landing pages.

We just received a “suggesation for purchaseing Cheap Drugs Online” (sic) in our spam folder. The call-to-action caught our eye - an invitation to click on an unembedded URL clearly leading to a Google Docs page. It’s not like we would’ve ever thought of it ourselves, but spammers wear a special breed of thinking cap.

On the one hand, the spammer behind this scam probably isn’t getting great analytics. But spammers aren’t interested in crazy notions such as purchase funnels. Only results count. And if this kind of scam results in a much more circuitous route to a whois lookup, so much the better for the spammer.

What will they think of next?

Sponsored Links

Howie Schwartz is at it again.  This time his target is “microblogging.”  We just had a webinar two nights ago with Howie showing attendees how to use microblogs to drive traffic and open new channels on the web for people to find your stuff.

If you’ve ever wondered why someone, especially a marketer looking for traffic, would want to mess with Twitter, then you need to watch as Howie shows you exactly why.

It took a mind like Howie’s to figure out that there is real power in microblogs and microblogging platforms.  Where I saw microblogs as a nuisance and utter waste of time, Howie figured out how to pull incredible clicks out of them and fill them with targeted, relevant content on autopilot.

Check out this free webinar recording on Microblogging!

Tags: automated blogging, automated microblogs, howie schwartz, microblogging, microblogs, twitter traffic

Microsoft’s proposed purchase of Yahoo could encounter a roadblock in China, “The New York Times” reports today.

An antimonopoly law, which takes effect August 1, strengthens Chinese oversight of acquisitions involving foreign businesses acquiring or investing in Chinese businesses.

Chinese regulators will have the authority to review the Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition’s impact on Alibaba.com, an e-commerce company in China. That’s because Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba for a 40 percent stake three years ago.

Quoting legal specialists, the Times reports that China’s new law could match the powers that regulators in the European Union and the United States now have to review foreign mergers for antitrust concerns.

If an Editor & Publisher “Special Report” on Yahoo’s newspaper consortium project is any indication, everything’s going swimmingly with the project, despite worries of how an impending Microsoft takeover could affect the situation. Consortium CEOs got together at a two-day meeting at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale in which Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider and President Sue Decker were in attendance. Apparently the leaders of this motley media crew were throwing around terms like “blown away” and “psyched” afterwards.

Does Yahoo have a rollercoaster in their office courtyard we haven’t heard about?

Anyway, though the story acts as a re-cap and somewhat of a cheer-fest for the Yahoo project, there are some tidbits of interest. For one, MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton told E&P Yahoo has 572 staffers working on paper consortium efforts, and he’s been told that will increase to 700 in the coming months. I’ve seen Yahoo job ads for HotJobs sales gigs, so don’t doubt they’re hiring, but these numbers do seem really high.

The story notes, “In the next few months, newspapers will begin beta testing of a platform that moves beyond the troubled recruitment advertising arena — and from traditional mass aggregation of eyeballs into targeting by demographics, geography, and consumer behavior. None of the CEOs will describe in any detail what Yahoo has cooking, but they are uniformly impressed.”

GM, Toyota and Honda were the heaviest online advertisers among auto companies in January, according to some new data from comScore Ad Metrix. GM delivered approximately 1.7 billion impressions, while Toyota placed 1.4 billion and Ford bought 11.3 billion.

However the data tell a different story when examined in terms of frequency and targeting. Toyota scored the highest number of ads per person — 22 per individual in January, comScore says, compared with 16 for GM and 11 for Ford. The heavy concentration of impressions probably has something to do with the auto maker’s online marketing strategy for its Scion brand, which is focused heavily on the “urban” segment (i.e. black and hispanic youth). Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if Prius and Toyota’s other hybrid/fuel economy advertising was aimed at fans of TreeHugger.com and other environment and cause-related content.

Speaking of Toyota and digital marketing, have you seen the Scion Speak “create your own crest” experience? Ranks right up there with the smoothest and prettiest site interfaces I’ve played with in recent memory. The “navigation wheel” concept sure is favored by experience designers. See R/GA’s recent work for Sunglass Hut.

PowerfulYet Simple Persuasion Techniques to Improve Website Marketing
 by: Alan Richardson

The art of getting skeptical prospects to believe the claims you make in your web site promotions, to agree with what you’re saying, is one of the most difficult challenges facing advertisers and copywriters. And bottomline - if the prospect doesn’t believe you, he’s not going to buy from you.

One of the most effective writing methods for getting prospects to believe your claims and turning them into customers is a technique known as ‘Pacing and Leading’. Let me define these terms.

Pacing statements are statements of fact. They are easily proven as true or are commonly accepted as true. Some examples;

· “No effective solution is possible unless one understands the problem”

· “Doctor visits are increasing across Americawith more heart disease and obesity than ever before”

Seethe prospect is consciously aware of the veracity of these statements.

Leading statements are the statements, the claims, you want your prospect to believe, but have not been proven true, or are not commonly accepted as true. Some examples:

· “The use of commonly available vitamins and minerals is insufficient for improving our health.”

The first question most people have is, "What the heck is a "Google?" It is a play on the word "googol," which is the mathematical figure 1 followed by 100 zeros. Depending on the level of your love for math, this is either the greatest or lamest name for a search engine. Regardless, the clever kids at Google have turned it into a cultural standard.

The Beginning

Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google in January of 1996, then known as BackRub. The boys were in the early twenties and classic computer geeks. Sergey was born in Moscow, alum of the University of Michigan and visiting Stanford. Larry was assigned to be his guide. During this visit, they obviously hit it off or today nobody would give a hoot about linking strategies.

Although two men and the name "BackRub" may raise some questions, the name actually referred to a method for producing search engine rankings. Specifically, the BackRub search engine was designed to analyze the "back links" to a site. Although BackRub developed a following with those in the know, nothing much happened for a few years.

1998

Establishing & maintaining rapport with your online audience is perhaps the single most important ingredient in marketing online. Actually in marketing period, but even more so online because of the lack of personal contact. Rapport is at the core of selling, always has been, always will be.

Let me tell you a little story.

Earlier this week, I got a call from a salesman after leaving a message about getting my stereo repaired. My expensive, but aging Nakamichi CD player is on the fritz, & I’m virtually tuneless. Not good.

It was a notable conversation for anybody interested in the art & science of persuasion. And in particular, the role rapport plays in that process.

My apprehension was this.

I bought the unit about 8 years ago, & I’m thinking. OK, this is going to cost me some money. I could probably now go out & buy a new CD player for the same amount. Just getting an estimate is going to cost me.

So the guy calls up, & immediately starts building rapport with me. How does he do it?

The non-profit dotMobi Advisory Group (MAG) is taking over the ilovemobileweb campaign launched last year by Bango, thereby bringing together over 125 companies to support and foster the initiative.

The stated campaign aims are to:

· Raise awareness of the mobile Web with consumers around the world
· Encourage open access to the mobile Web for every user
· Provide consumers with choice of content and services
· Provide easy pathways for fixed Internet publishers to move to mobile
· More standardization of devices and development platforms

Interested organizations are invited to join the initiative — gratis — via the e-mail link on the ilovemobileweb Web site.

Do you know that you can promote your home business absolutely free of cost? Moreover you can generate quality traffic of the potential prospects who will come to your site because they are interested in what you sell.

Yes! It can be done absolutely free. And it is fun too.

# Write and publish articles ?

This is the best traffic generation method. Write articles centered on the theme of your home business niche and submit them to the article directories. There are thousands of article website that are eager to publish your articles. When you write make it sure that you write an article well. Your article when published will be an unending source of quality traffic.

Your resource box in the end of article will serve as the link to your website. Make your article interesting enough so that the reader reads till the end and is intrigued enough to click the link in the end.

Writing a good article is not that difficult. Think about an idea and expand it. Write as much you can while taking care of the typos and grammatical error. After you finish it close it down and relax. Review it next day for editing. You will be surprised to find the changes you can make to improve your articles.