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Search Marketers have a tendency to put anything they do online and find a way to monitize it. Here is you chance to look over my shoulder on one way I will use a free resource like Blogger Beta to create what I call an “integrated effort” which will let me link several efforts to multiply the results.

Let’s take a look at a little experiment of mine called 10 Dollar Wine - The Inexpensive Wine Resource. That site which is simply a review of good wines that are generaly available for less then 10 dollars a bottle or even slightly over that price point was my brain child after paying my 2005 income tax.

I decided that with a simple site and a bit of adsense revenue I could turn my hobby of drinking and taking notes on wine into not only another source of income but a tax deduction as well. The site has done rather well with decent SERPs for the limited ammount of SEO effort that has gone into it.

So I recently decided to try a little experiment using the new blogger beta. What I have done is put summaries of each review (post dated to around the original date of the review) with a link to the full review onto my new 10 Dollar Wine Blog. I am going to use this blog as an rss feed generator to send my email notifications via aweber (my email autoresponder) to my members each time a new review is posted. RSS can seem complicated but using it with Aweber is pretty simple to make your blogger blog send emails to your list for you, here is a Screen Shot Video of how to set it up.

Just understand this to simply the concept; once I have my feed broadcast set up in Aweber everything will be automatic. Each time I post to the blog an email with the new post will go out to my email list and they will be notified that I have downed another bottle and posted a new review.
So this is going to provide thee functions for me

1. The blog itself should generate traffic for the site from places like Technorati and other Blog Search Engines along with hopefully some of its own natural search results in Google, MSN and Yahoo.

2. The blog will provide a deep link to every review as they are posted. This should give a modest boost in the SEO efforts of my main web site.

3. It will consolidate my emails to my list and help create visitor loyality with out me having to work on my newsletter it will just be sent after each new review.

The key with online efforts is to create the maximum effect. Here what I have done is exactly that. Instead of having to maintain a blog, maintain an email list and maintain a site I am really just maintaining a site and letting that effort drive the other two.

The proceedure is simple,

1. I created a frame work for a review that you can see in this simple review of 2003 Rancho Zabaco Dancing Bull Zinfandel. So to do a review all I do is change the wine name and fill in the the text for each section and that creates the new page on my site.

2. I then take the primary summary of the review and cut and paste it into a blog post with a link to the actual review (this adds may be 5 minutes to each review). Here is the Blog Post about the Rancho Zabaco Dancing Bull Review.

That is all I do the rest is now automated.

1. My blog post pings Technorati and othe Blog services and gets its own traffic along with some natural search results from the big seach engines.

2. Each post pings my account at Aweber and the Aweber server merges the post into a broadcast email to my members who are constantly updated with out me needing to “author and send” a true newsletter.

I am sure there are other email systems that allow you to do this but I am really happy with Aweber. I used it to build a list of over 20,000 opt ins for my Chris Daughtry Fans website and never had one problem so I really can’t recommend them highly enough.

The key is really for you to make sure you are getting the most out of every effort, this is just one example of how to do that. What methods are you using to maximize your efforts.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: blogging, seo, sem, search engine marketing, email marketing, rss, xml, atom, blogger, blogger beta, google blogger

Additional Info on Blogger Beta

• Blogger Beta Up to Code
• Initial Review of Blogger Beta
• Blogger Beta Not Showing in Google’s Blog Search
• Google Announces Blogger in Beta
• Moblogging on the Beta
• Known Issues in Blogger Beta

Popularity: 9% [?]

Recently, a federal judge issued a ruling that is shaking up the way that websites are designed. The ruling lets a lawsuit by the National Federation of the Blind against Target Corp. to proceed. This does not mean that Target has lost the suit, only that the case would not be dismissed and would proceed. The suit charges that Target's website is inaccessible to the blind and therefore violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and several California laws designed to protect the disabled. Targets argument for dismissal was that accessibility only applies to physical locations and not websites. The court disagreed saying that all services must be accessible to "persons with disabilities." 

How Does a Website Become Accessible to the Blind? People who are blind commonly use text to speech software that dictates the contents of a website to them. This means that any images on a website that have text in them won't be read by the speech software. For example, if you look at this site that sells yamaha parts you will notice that the navigation on the left has text that is presented as an image. There is a way to label the picture with any text you want so that a speech reader can speak to the contents of the image. 

This is done using an "Alt" tag. In the case of the Yamaha site, each image would need to be alt tagged with the same text that is contained in the image. So for the "buy accessories online" link, the code would have "alt='buy accessories online'". This way, a blind user would know to click that link if they are wanting to buy the accessories. Without these tags, the user would have to navigate to each page and hope that there is text on that page to tell them what the page is about. A good example of proper alt tagging can be seen at the site of an extended auto warranty company. 

If you point your mouse over one of the green tabs that links to more info on the warranties, you alt text will appear (only in Internet Explorer, Firefox users must right click to view image properties). The text in the alt tag should reflect where the image link will take you in the site. Every image on this page has an alt tag provided. How Does This Affect My Search Rankings? 

Search engines act in a similar fashion to text to speech software because the search engine spiders that read your web page also cannot read text in images or decipher what the image contains. By using the alt tag you are able to tell the search engine what exactly is in the picture. Search engines also use this data to better help them when indexing images into their image search engines (images.google.com, search.yahoo.com/images & others). 

When linking to a specific page, the search engines prefer that you use text, so that they can tell what the content of the page being linked to is about. Essentially, it is like voting for a page to rank well for a keyword in their search rankings using the text in the link. For example, if I wanted to link to the site completelandsculpture.com, I would use the text "Dallas landscape design". 

If I used their logo to link to them, the search engines would see the link as having no text associated, so it would be like a vote without giving the site credit for the content it contains. This is why you need to alt tag the image with same text "Dallas landscape design" or something similar so that the search engines then know that that site is about landscape design. This will help to rank that site better for the text used either in the text link or as an alt tag. 

You may be wondering, why not just stuff every image alt tag with keywords to rank better for those terms. The answer is that the search engines have evolved and can detect this keyword spamming. A rule of hand is to use a phrase less than 4 words to describe the image and don't stuff keywords into the tag. Many people will tell you that the search engines don't rank on alt tags but I can say that I have seen sites with only images show up in search results and the description that Google displayed used text found only in the alt tags. How Can I See My Site Like a Text to Speech Reader or a Search Engine?  

There are a few ways to make sure your site is readable to both the search engines and to people with disabilities. The first is to use a website standards validation tool. This also makes sure your site can be viewed properly in all browsers. All you do is put in the URL of the page you want to check and they will create a report with all errors. If you want to see how your site actually looks to search engines and browsers for the disabled you can use the SEO Browser tool or the Lynx text browser. 

This will strip all of the CSS styles and Images out of your site so you can view it at its most simple form. For more in-depth analysis of the things you need to consider to make a site ADA compliant please click here. 

-Mark B

Technorati Tags: Americans with Disabilities Act, accessibility, Target, search engine optimization, web design, web accessibility, alt tags

Popularity: 5% [?]

Note: The below article was my orginal view of the Zune before many problems came to light.  I no longer have the positive view of the product as in the following review.  Read, The Music Industry is Stupid, to learn more.  I have left the original review to show how I was very much wanting Zune to be a success as I think this makes my current criticism more creditable then the many Apple loyalists that just seem to want to bash Microsoft and Zune.

A lot of bloggers and news sources are downplaying the new Microsoft Zune player just officially announced with full details on the 14th of September. I, as you can tell by the title think they have a home run on their hands. I think before I go any further I need to define what I consider a home run. To me a home run means that the new product

1. Will take some of the iPod business. Note that is said “some” not all just enough to become profitable at Apple’s expense. The product does not need to be an “iPod Killer” to be a success in my book. To put it another way how would you like to have a 5% share of the current iPod business?

2. Has at least some features that the iPod does not that may for some users be attractive enough to make up for what the iPod does “better”.

3. Demonstrait to users that Microsoft is just taking a first shot at the market with plans for new versions and firmware upgrades.

4. Provide a music download service that offers some advantage over iTunes. This again does not mean it is “better over all” just that there are some unique value adds that are missing on iTunes.

5. Get Microsoft into “the game” with a product that can stand on its own beyond just carrying the Microsoft name.

Now who knows that may or may not be what the folks at Microsoft will consider a success but to me if they pull off those 5 points well with their first product then to me they have indeed pulled off a successful "market entry", and that is what needs to be remembered the first generation is only the initial market entry for Microsoft. It is not meant to be the end all be all Microsoft portable media players.

So how did they do? Well here are the products highlights strait from the Microsoft Fact Sheet,

Wireless Zune to Zune music sharing. Zune lets you spontaneously share selected full-length sample tracks of your favorite songs, homemade recordings, playlists or pictures with friends wirelessly, device to device. You can listen to any song you receive up to three times in three days. And if you like a song you hear and want to buy it, you can flag it right on your device to easily find it later.

Your own personalized Zune. Zune is easy to use and easy to love. You can choose one of three base colors, each combined with a distinctive double-shot finish created by the overlay of one color on another. The player also can easily be customized with your favorite pictures.

Large color screen. Zune comes with a bright 3-inch LCD video screen that works in portrait or landscape mode. Your music, video and pictures never looked better.

30GB player. Zune stores up to 7,500 songs, 25,000 pictures or 100 hours of video. You can make playlists on the go and watch a slide show while you’re listening. Watching video in landscape mode gets the most out of the vivid display.

Zune Pass. Downloads or a subscription? It’s your choice. A Zune Pass subscription gives you “all you can eat” access to discover and explore the Zune Marketplace.

Built-in FM tuner. With the built-in FM tuner you can listen to local FM radio stations or tune in to programming while you’re at your local health club, for example. Advanced tuning capabilities allow you to see the name of the song currently playing on selected frequencies.

Accessories. You can choose from a full line of accessories to outfit your Zune. Three Zune Accessory Packs provide complete solutions for Zune in your car, in your home or while you travel. Individual accessories are also available.

Online music store. You can browse the huge selection of music designed to work seamlessly with your Zune in the Zune Marketplace. When you find new music that you love, it’s simple to buy it and sync it on your player. The Zune Marketplace works with the Microsoft® Points program so you can purchase music online without a credit card.

Import your music. Zune software can automatically import your existing music, pictures and videos from iTunes and Windows Media® Player in a variety of formats, including your existing play lists and song ratings, as permitted by the online service from which it was purchased.

Software Updates. As Zune evolves, your device can be easily updated. The Zune software on your PC will let you know when updates are available for download. And with built-in wireless capability in each player, the future is filled with possibilities.

I am not going to say too much about the accessories, music store and software for the moment as I would like to go more in-depth on them in future posts. Suffice to say I really like the fact that you can buy music permanently from the store and you don’t have to keep a subscription to continue to play the music. Of these features I think there are two that help to really make the Zune an alternative to the iPod.

First the ability to share and beam songs and pictures to other Zune users is really cool. This feature has been downplayed as being nothing new and people have pointed out that Palm devices have been beaming data for many years. That may be true but I can’t do it with an iPod, let alone what happens if I DARE TO PLUG MY IPOD INTO YOUR PC. iPods and iTunes are simply set up to prevent sharing of files even the ones you own personally, the Zune is designed from the get go to be a sharing tool (at least with your personal content) and I think that is a great differentiator in the current music market place. While music purchased from the Zune Marketplace will only play three times, if it was ripped from a CD in your personal collection, you can import it all including your playlists, album art, ratings and play counts.

Who knows, may be someone up in Redmond Washington read my article about SpiralFrog? Second is the FM tuner. While many competing MP3 players have this feature and it was again met with a yawn by some bloggers, again my point is while other players do have an FM tuner, the iPod does not. According to Microsoft, Zune is really designed at first entry to compete the 30 Gig iPod mostly used for music not the new 80 GB iPod Video Player. If my choice is between the Zune and the 30 Gig iPod the radio tuner indeed could be a decisive factor.

While either will be great for a podcast if I want to listen to live radio the Zune will let me and the iPod won’t. To me this is a really great feature if it could record audio from the radio broadcast it would be even better. My guess is that in time a firmware upgrade will allow for that too. Of course you can still play videos in many formats on your Zune it is just important to understand the market where the Zune is to compete if we are to judge its’ potential for success.

My Conclusion I would have to say that the Zune is going to be a real success for Microsoft and I have already told my wife that a Zune Player in on the top of my Christmas list this year. I personally feel the first generation of the Zune will only be scratching the surface for what is coming long term. I also think there are a few features Microsoft would have preferred to have with the new Zune’s release but would guess it came down to releasing for Christmas of 06 or late spring of 07 and Microsoft made the right call. The prominent mention of “firmware upgrades” tells us there will be more to come even from the initial release.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Right as last month came to an end the FCC approved a deal with incumbent local phone service provider AT&T which will allow for rate increases in northern Illinois including in Chicago and surrounding areas.

According to the Associated Press,

“The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) agreed to reclassify local phone service in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs as “competitive,” which exempts AT&T from complying with certain rate restrictions, said ICC spokeswoman Beth Bosch.In exchange, AT&T voluntarily agreed to limit annual rate increases for four years. Monthly usage fees would not increase by more than $1 each year and per-call fee increases would be capped at a half-cent, she said.“This compromise provides AT&T with enough regulatory certainty and flexibility to compete with our unregulated rivals,” Carrie Hightman, president of AT&T Illinois, said in a statement.New rates can take effect beginning Jan. 1.”

Advocacy groups including the AARP are concerned that the increases will have the largest effect on “those who can least afford it”, mainly retires and lower income households that rely on basic wire line services and don’t have the option to utilize services on broadband and wireless networks such as VoIP or Cellular phones.

Many groups, specifically the elderly and lower income are either not familiar or intimidated by VoIP and Broadband technology. Cellular which is often claimed to be a “competitor” by incumbent carriers has higher “basic rates” that tend to make it an unattractive option for those in lower income brackets.

For those effected by this increase, now may be the time to consider a competitive local phone service provider. Many such providers have entry level programs that allow low feature users to save money over incumbent providers. These users are the exact group the AARP and other advocacy groups are most concerned about being negatively effected by the new agreement. In fact the AARP went on official record with a statement stating,
“This decision will seriously impact the independence, health and safety of many seniors”.

I feel as usual that the AARP has gone just a tad bit overboard in their prediction that Uncle Joe many have to move into a home because his phone bill will increase by 2 dollars in the next 24 months, however they are correct that the older population who live on fixed incomes are the group that will be most effected by this decision. Certainly with the lobbying effort behind this decision the rate increase are going to come, no one puts out that kind of effort to get anything approved with out actually doing it.

Technorati Tags: at&t, aarp, icc, Illinois Commerce Commission, phone serivice, voip, broadband phone, cellular, cell phone, phone competition, rate increase, broadband, phone bill

Popularity: 6% [?]

iPod fans have plenty to be happy because Apple just introduced its latest generation iPod devices. The new iPods will feature longer battery life (up to twenty-four hours) and brighter displays. The new iPod features three updated editions.

The new iPod Shuffle, about the size of a Bick Lighter, is now officially the smallest portable MP3 player in the world. Retail price is around $79, while a small player it is big on space allowing you to store up to 240 songs.

The iPod Nano has been completely redesigned. It’s now thinner, has five color choices and three storage size options: 2GB, 4GB and a new 8GB version. Starting at around $149, the Nano is now more competitive with some newer offerings from folks like Sandisk and their new Sansa.

Of couse the biggest news is that Apple introduced the new 80GB video iPod, which has replaced the 60 GB model. If you are counting (and who isn’t) 80 GB is enough space for more then 20,000 songs as well as photos, videos and movies.
On the movie front Apple iTunes store now offers over 75 movies from Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films. Prices for the ever-growing movie collection will begin at $9.99 and go up to $12.99.

On a final note Apple also introduced iTunes 7 which offers new features such as new cover art, flow views of music, TV shows, games and movies. One thing I can say for Apple is they are not just sitting back enjoying their success, they in fact are continuing to innovate, develop and lead the market.

Even as the fan of Creative Labs that I personaly am that is great news because it keeps everyone working hard to get better as well,

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: ipod, mp3, nano, new ipod, downloadable music, music downloads, movie downloads, itunes, digital music, ipod suffle, ipod nano, 80 gb ipod

Popularity: 5% [?]

I have already written at length about the Net Neutrality debate in two prior articles

1. What is the Net Neutrality Debate Really All About

and

2. The Future of Net Neutrality

This one will be a bit less technical in nature and simply calls upon the reader to use some very basic knowledge of business history over the last few decades.

This is quite simple really, both sides of the debate will say the other is a group of rich and greedy corporations that is trying to control the Internet. In this debate let’s just look at the three biggest companies on each side of the debate.

Three of the biggest companies that are opposed to Net Neutrality are

1. Verizon
2. Comcast
3. AT&T

On the other side the three of the biggest companies for Net Neutrality are

1. Yahoo
2. eBay
3. Google

Ok well let’s just take an honest look at all six and see how each has approached competition, worked with each other and fostered success for small entrepreneurs.

The Group Opposed to Net Neutrality

Verizon - In most areas served by Verizon they are you only option for phone service and if you are buying from a CLEC (competitive local carrier) they are probably reselling Verizon service so they are still making money off of your bill. The company itself was created when the Government had to step in to break up a monopoly. They have fought competition at every level and have purchased quite a few of their fellow Baby Bell counterparts and now are the primary or only choice for a third of the US for land line phone service. They are also doing everything that they can possibly do to be permitted to sell video services while at the same time doing all they can to prevent the cable companies from being allowed into the phone service market. In the broadband Internet market they are often the only choice other then the incumbent Cable Providers offering. They even fought tooth and nail with AT&T to be allowed into the long distance market back in the 90’s while, you guessed it doing all they could to prevent AT&T from being allowed to enter the local phone service market.

AT&T - See Verizon (that is no joke, the above is also a perfect description of AT&T so I won’t restate it here)

Comcast - They are the largest cable TV company in the United States and anywhere they have service they are your only choice for cable television unless you go to a Dish based service like Direct TV or Dish Networks. They have fought hard to keep it that way and bought up many smaller cable companies. In many areas not served by DSL due to distance they are the only broadband internet provider you can get. Just like the phone giants, but in reverse, they are doing everything that they can possibly do to be permitted to sell phone services while at the same time doing all they can to prevent the phone companies from being allowed into the video market.

Google - Google has never attempted to prevent any competitor from entering the search marketing world, in fact thousands of small companies today exist because of the way Google changed the internet. Google has given rise to more successful small businesses in the last 10 years then any company in history over the same period of time. Google’s adSense program alone allows thousands of independent bloggers, publishers and web masters to share in Google’s revenue. Add to this that Google both sells ads space to and buys ad space from their competitors.

Yahoo - You can almost say “see Google” for this one! Yahoo has fostered small business from the beginning with things like Yahoo Stores that allow even the most technophobic person to create an online store. They made PPC advertising easy to understand and have allowed countless small businesses to grow buy using it. Just like Google did with adSense, Yahoo has allowed countless bloggers, site owner and small business people the opportunity to share revenue with them via their Yahoo Publisher Program. They have both sold advertising space to and bought it from Google and Microsoft’s MSN Search. In fact at one time they displayed Google results on their search engine and until just about a year ago provided advertising revenue and “sponsored results” to MSN Search. Yahoo has never once attempted to prevent anyone from getting into the search industry or any other industry for that matter.

eBay - eBay has enabled more competition then any company ever to have existed and just as Yahoo and Google have done they have helped tens of thousands of people to start and build businesses. It is almost impossible to point to a better example of free market and open competition then eBay. eBay is actually 100% dependent upon free and open competition for success. eBay to this day is one of the biggest customers for both Yahoo and Google and has worked with them in many areas. Just like Google and Yahoo, eBay also have a revenue sharing program for affiliates.

So I will put it to you this way,

Which of these companies do you really think is most concerned with helping the consumer, small business person and has a track record of being open to fair competition?

Do you really think that the huge phone and cable companies really want to keep your costs down? Do you really think they have no interest in blocking competition? Do they have a history worthy of trust in regard to not blocking competition if left to their own choice?

Should we really trust any company to not block competition when they have the means to do so and doing so would be of advantage to them?

Which group has a history of working directly with their competition and helping each other to succeed?

Which group has done everything possible to block each other at every step?

In short who most deserves the trust of the average Joe or Jane?

Google, eBay and Yahoo?

or

Verizon, AT&T and Comcast?

You tell me which group you think can be trusted to help out the little guy and not block competition. To me just looking at the companies in this debate is all you need to do to understand what side of the debate really is of benefit to the average person.

Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Yahoo, eBay, Google, Neutrality, adSense, Yahoo Publisher, internet neutrality, deregulation, anti-competition, antitrust, anti-competitive, anti-competitive conduct

Popularity: 7% [?]

Back in August I posted an article called “Is Yahoo Crazy?“, well my friends I think the answer is now a clear yes . In that article I picked mostly on the fact that Yahoo Released a service called Yahoo! Search Builder that lets you build your own search engine and customize the results.

I asked readers to comment on their blog about allowing Publishers to monazite the results and Yahoo has responded with the following,

From Ariel at the Yahoo Post about Search Builder: “Actually, yes! Stay tuned. In the meantime, if you have some ideas/thoughts that would make for a killer integration of Search Builder with Yahoo! Publisher Network please let us know!”

That response came only after numerous questions about adding this feature that were totally ignored.

What?

Here is one, DO IT! Follow the Nike creed and “Just Do It“, that is “the killer idea” there is no more. The failure of Yahoo to do so has prompted me to set up a few Swicki’s to test the effectiveness of them. I set one up for Comtech News you can see it on the upper right side of our Blog or link strait to it here “Comtech’s Swicki“.

I have also set up one for iPod Modifications and one for African House Snakes. All of them have not really been marketed at all just played with and a few links and site integrations tried.

The results? I am making a few extra dollars with Google adSense, not a lot but mind you I just tossed these together to test the principal. Now add to this the fact that I must SPLIT my adSense revenue 50-50 with Swicki and you start to realize that this concept is a damn good one.

So here sits Yahoo and they have

1. A new search engine builder that works well
2. A group of hand selected beta publishers with a huge combined web presence ready to go.
3. The ability to finally have something that Google does not in the contextual ad market

And once again they sit in their foxhole with the cross hairs on the enemy and refuse to pull the trigger. Honestly it would take perhaps 1-2 hours of programming maximum to write the code to give this tools to their Publishers and they sit back and wonder why “Search Builder” is just not taking off.

Why? I can build a Swicki and get 50% of the adSense Revenue or I can build a Yahoo Custom Search and get NOTHING. If those are my choices I will take the 50% share any day.

The good news is this has all prompted me to look deeper into Swicki and start building some custom community searches. I encourage you to try out our ComTech Swicki and suggest some sites for various searches, etc. It is very intuitive so I am sure you will catch on fast.

I will do a more in-depth article focused just on Swicki in the future but I would like your personal input here. Why indeed does Yahoo do some crazy things? Are they just acting like their name or is there some hidden wisdom in their seemingly self destructive behavior?

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: yahoo, search, search builder, swicki, eurekster, social search, seo, sem, adsense, contextual advertising, pay per click, search engine, marketing, ipod modifications

Popularity: 6% [?]

A few weeks ago a service called SpiralFrog was launched and we were one of the first to report on it in our article, "SpiralFrog - More Proof the Music Companies Just Don’t Get It". Well this weekend a similar story was announce about legal movie downloads. 

The new service run by Amazon.com is called Unbox but I think the term "Unintellegent Marketing" might be a better description. I happen to follow Mark Cuban's blog "Blog Maverick" because in a former life I was deeply involved in the design of the Broadcast.com data centers that made him a billionaire. 

It turns out Mark shares my view on this new service and has posted a review by Richard Greenfield along with his own commentary at his blog. The review and examination of the problems and shortfalls of Unbox is extensive and dead on so rather then review it ourselves we will just recommend that you read Mark's Review of Unbox on his blog. Internet Movie Downloads vs Store DVDs - a quick biz lesson

What do you think the future has in store for Unbox and downloading of Movies in general?

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: Richard Greenfield, broadcast.com, unbox, mark cuban, movie downloads, blog mavrick, online media, online video, streaming video, amazon.com, file sharing, video downloads, movies

Popularity: 9% [?]

I was a solider at one time in my life back 17 years ago. I joined the Army at 17 and then served in the US Army Airborne during the First Gulf War. After that I served for 2 more years for deployments with combat engineers in Panama, Hondours and El Salvador.

Today in my mid 30s I am a prior service “old man” in the eyes of the young guys out there serving today and like most “old men” from time to time I day dream and think back to my less sane years when jumping out of an aircraft flying so low that deploying a reserve was not a real option was something I considered, “fun”.

The other day during a morning drive I was trying to think about some marketing ideas and one such old solider day dream came to me. I attempted to fend it off and think of some new marketing ideas. For some reason, the old “Riflemens Creed” kept playing in my head.

Perhaps you have heard in the movie, Full Metal Jacket, it is the one that starts out, “This is my rifle, there are many like it, but this one is mine. Without me my rifle is useless, with out my rifle I am useless”. I then thought about how as Internet Marketers we could easily call our knowledge our “rifles”.

Think about it, “this is my knowledge, many have it but this knowledge is mine. With out my knowledge I am useless, with out my actions my knowledge is useless”. That is about as true a statement as can be made about being an online marketer!

By the time I reached my destination the following work was already complete in my head, only getting it into print was necessary. I hope you, my fellow internet marketing warrior, enjoys it and finds some words of truth within it.

~Jack

The Internet Marketers Creed
By Jack Spirko

I am an Internet Marketer, which means I am fighting a war in which I shall always be out numbered. I choose to fight this war knowing that numbers alone cannot defeat me, as the Internet is the most equalizing battlefield in the history of warfare.

On the Internet it is my mind that is my primary weapon so I will maintain it, the way a solider maintains his rifle. I will do so by learning at least one new piece of information every day of my existence and I shall apply that information until I fully master its’ power.

I will seek opportunity in everything that I see, seeking synergy, relevance and importance in all things from my drive to the store, to the morning news and all events that I am aware of. Knowing that the Internet is, “content on demand” I will tune my attention to always utilize what is being sought to further my mission.

My primary mission is to insure that all the objectives of my websites and online activities are accomplished. I will do this by constant attention, innovation and never being satisfied with the current level of success, everything shall be tracked, measured and improved constantly.

I will monitor the Internet for any negative comments about my organization or my person and will never allow false or misleading claims or information to stand unchallenged. Response to these claims will be swift, accurate and aimed with laser precision, as the enemy will never be permitted to maintain the advantage false propaganda.

The war is won by the accumulation of power; power is in content and structure. Every activity I take will be designed to improve the content and structure of my online presence. From the search engines to the blogosphere and back I will not just be the master of my domain, I will be master of the web leading to it as well.

As an Internet Marketer I am part of an elite and 100% volunteer force of warriors and only my fellow warriors understand me. There is no knowledge we can gain, nor any school we can go to that we ourselves have not created. While my fellow warrior is technically the enemy, he is also my friend I will work with him so that we may both improve.

The battlefield will change every day and I accept that I may win a thousand battles only to end up back where I began. This is the way of the Internet warrior and it will not bring me to pause, only the will to adapt, overcome and achieve. There is no battle that cannot be won, because my greatest weapon is that my mind is capable of rewriting the rules and changing the nature of the battle at will.

*The Internet Marketers Creed is an orginal work by Jack Spirko and was orginally published at The Comtech News Blog. It may be reprinted and published so long as this credit line and all links with in it are left intact.

Technorati Tags: the internet marketers creed, internet marketing, marketing, seo, sem, search engine marketing, online marketing, search engine optimization, web marketing, web site marketing, blog, blogging

Popularity: 6% [?]

In the last year or two social book marking sites have become all the rage. Del.icio.us was probably the first truly successful such site but now there are quite literally dozens of such sites. In this post I don’t want to go in depth on the how and why of social book marking, there is a ton of info on that if you want to know more and perhaps in time we will review a few of the more popular ones. 

No today I want to talk to you about Diigo and more accurately the Diigo Tool Bar for the Mozilla FireFox Browser. Like most tech geeks I got on board using Del.icio.us a while ago and liked it ok. To me at least I could always find things I had seen before and that alone was worth the effort. Then one day I read a blog post on this new service called Diigo which had some really cool features over Del.icio.us but that was not what got my attention. No it was the tool bar that would let me bookmark in like 10 of the most popular bookmarking services in one shot. 

So I could put any of my own content in all the sites in seconds along with content I might want to use again. I tried it and with a few hiccups it has worked great. Currently using the tool bar you can bookmark in the following services, 

Diigo (well duh) 
Furl  
Blinklist  
Spurl  
Yahoo MyWeb2.0  
Shadows  
Connotea (I have not played with this one yet) 
Del.icio.us  
Simpy  
RawSugar  
Netvouz  
Ma.gnolia  

That is a pretty substantial list and there are a few things I want to point out to our readers about this new service from Diigo. First that after using many of these services I think Diigo is among the best. 

The ease of book marking and tagging sites is great along with the fact you can highlight part of a page you are bookmarking and it will be added in with your bookmark. The next thing that has made Diigo my new tool of choice is the amazing user help forum where you quickly get answers and help from people that work for Diigo. I recently had an issue with Netvouz not getting updated when I book marked new material, my question was answered in only minutes, pointing me to a new beta version of the tool bar in their labs section which has corrected the problem.

The last feature that has made me fall in love with Diigo is the most important, it is the tool bar itself that lets me add content to all those other social sites in seconds. Take away everything else and I would still use it as my primary tool just for this feature. (There is a marketing lesson in that alone)  

Why? Well, social book marking is experiencing the same type of market acceptance and battle that the search engine world went through back in the 90s and to me that means a few of them will come out as the equivalent to MSN, Yahoo, Ask and Google in the future. Which ones? Who knows so I want my content in as many of them as possible. 

Just like at one time you worked to get you web pages into LookSmart, HotBot, etc. I have also noticed that while links and Del.icio.us are all tagged with rel=”nofollow” and therefore don’t help with link popularity for SEO that many of the others are not tagged and I have found that Google and the others not only will index you personal Diigo, RawSugar, etc pages if you provide links to them from other web pages, they will also deep crawl the links and follow them. How much link popularity boost will they provide? 

Who knows but it can’t hurt and it may speed indexing of new content as well which is a huge plus. So I now have the Diigo Bar squarely in my browser bar and I bookmark my personal new content in every service available through it. I also bookmark any content I might want to see again some day from any source to keep my links varied and growing and above all useful to myself and others. 

So I want to be clear that I am not talking about just spamming these services with only my own content but using them as designed and including my own content when I do. It took a bit of time to set up accounts with all the services and with some I was able to import all my existing Del.icio.us bookmarks to get them going. Yet now that it is done my content is being added to the entire list each day. So to me it was a few hours well spent. 

Of course when ever Diigo updates the tool bar and ads a new service I will add it as well. You may want to consider using Diigo the same way to get your content into the most popular services and build your own directory of sites you want to be able to find. If so please consider adding our blog as well. So what services do you use and what do you think the future of social bookmarking is? 

~ Jack Spirko 

Technorati Tags: Diigo, Furl, Blinklist, Spurl, Yahoo MyWeb2.0, Shadows, Connotea, Del.icio.us, Simpy, RawSugar, Netvouz, Ma.gnolia, social bookmarking, bookmark, bookmarking, social search, marketing, web marketing, internet marketing

Popularity: 15% [?]

Well, I kind of feel that I must have been asleep at the switch on this one.  We have done a few reports on Blogger Beta since Google Announced it on August 14th.  One of the biggest issues we saw right away was that inspite of the cool way you could drag and drop elements around the page it seemed very limiting that you could not edit the HTML code.

This had me wondering!  It simply made no sense to remove such a cool feature that allowed total control.  Well Google has heard your concerns and you can now edit HTML in Blogger Beta.  Check out the Google Blog post, New Old Feature on Beta.

~ Jack Spirko

Prior Posts on Blogger Beta

• Blogger Beta Not Showing in Google’s Blog Search
• Quick Review of Blogger Beta

Technorati Tags: blogger, google blogger, blogger beta, blogger in beta, blogging, google, html

Popularity: 4% [?]

Yes it is true and I have verified it! I have already achieved some top ten rankings for the African House Snake Blog that I set up as a fun play blog during my Initial Review of Blogger Beta but it still does not show up in Googles Blog Search.

This is no major blow because it shows that you can easily rank a new Beta Blog in the normal results of Googles SERPs but it does beg the question of WHY?

Why indeed would Google roll out a new Blogger platform that we are quite impressed with and NOT include it in there Blog Search right from the get go? We are not sure but in spite of this limitation it is still an extreme improvement over the original Blogger.

It also appears to take about 3 days for new posts to be picked up by Technorati even with a manual ping as opposed to the almost instant inclusion of new posts to our Comtech New Blog and other blogs that are built on a Word Press Platform.

Clearly Google still has work to do but if you are new to blogging, Blogger beta is a good place to get your feet wet. In fact we have a few new sites planned and the blog associated with them may in fact be built on the new Blogger Beta Platform.  Perhaps Google should add this issue to their list of Known Issues for Blogger in Beta.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Last week Google announced that you can now download entire copies of books published prior to 1923 that are no longer under copyright protection and in what is called the “public domain” on Google Books Beta.

Looking at it a bit creatively we came up with an idea where a web master could use it to increase newsletter sign ups in our post, Google Books, An Opportunity for Internet Marketers?

Thinking about this idea I decided there was clearly more that can be done with it, so here is my tip of the day.

A web site in just about any niche can come up with SOME BOOK that fits the niche. Even someone with a site on Internet Marketing could find some old psychology book or something with some type of fit if they were simply creative in HOW the two relate. So, how about simply finding such a book, writing up some information on it, including something about how it relates to your site and visitors and using it as simple link bait?

If you pick the right topic and do a little optimizing you can probably rank the page for a semi to non competitive term or three, get some traffic and have that little page out there building one way links quite passively for years and years gathering link power you can pass along to your other pages at will.

No, it won’t build you 1000 viral links in 48 hours but it can be a new source of diverse links from untapped sources (the ones not being badgered for links on a daily basis). How well it fits your niche and how well it works is limited only by you own creativity.

You could even work both ends of the idea and just develop different supporting copy and making two pages. Market one aggressively to your visitors in exchange for joining your mail list and market the second passively as link bait where you don’t require list sign up in return for a download.

As an Internet marketer your challenge is to see what others miss and figure out how to profit from that.

I am even looking for a way to tie the topic of Local Phone Service into this idea, I am sure I will find some way to do it ;>)

So just what other ways are there to utilize Google Books as more then a library full of older books you can get for free? Please provide your comments on this subject, as they are more then welcome.

Popularity: 4% [?]