ComTech News

Recently I have been playing with a some what black hat script, OK it isn't some what it is dark as they come.  As I began to expand the possibilites of what could be done with this script in tying in several blogs together I developed a need to do a "random" post.  As in one that would pull a post at random and display it.  I started out doing this with some PHP but the way I know how to do it in my limited non programmer way was actually leading to a page that included the random post.

For reasons I can not publicly divulge at this time that was not good enough I needed the post itself as in its full URL to be in the browser so that my script would access the right data.  After fighting my poor ability to use PHP for about an hour this morning I decided to do a Google search for "random redirect"  The first result was a Word Press Plugin that you guessed it does random redirection to a post on your site.

The Plug In can be downloaded here, Random Redirection Plug In

The plug in is beyond simple to use, you just download it and activate it.  There is zero configuration beyond that!  All you need to do is put   /?random    after the root of your blog.

So for instance if your blog is at the top level domain just use

http://www.yourdomain.com/?random

Say you host at a secondary level like /blog then you would use

http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/?random

Or if you are on the free word press (please buy a domain and some cheap hosting if you are, you get so much more freedom if you self host)  then you would use.

http://www.yourname.wordpress.com/?random

Now I really think I may actually hire out someone to customize this for me so you have a control panel and can select a random post from a specific or several specific categories.  Like here I could limit the random to say search marketing and blogging.  Or even have several random options like random-1 going to a random search article and random-2 going to a random article on telecom.

If you want to beat me to the punch on this, go ahead, go for it.  The links you can gain from a cool plug in are worth the few hundred bucks at rentacoder!  If not I will get to it, this works for me now as is.

The lesson here though is ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS check first for a plug in if you want WordPress to do something, I wasted about an hour of my time on a nice Saturday Morning, got frustrated and even snapped at the kids for making noise while I was "trying to think".  All I really needed to do was do one google search, download a free plug in and click activate.  Lesson learned! Don't make the same mistake I did, that is 60 minutes of my life I will never get back.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: wordpress, word press, plugins, plug in, random redirect, black hat, blackhat, blogging, blog, blog plugin, blog marketing, seo, sem, search marketing

Popularity: 8% [?]

So while getting ready to leave my house this morning and having a cup of coffee I had the local Dallas Fox News broadcast on.  As you might imagine the new Apple iPhone was a huge topic of discussion.  As a local station the focus instead of the technology was the people (idiots in my opinion) who were camping out in the rain to wait in line and buy an iPhone.

Now this is where it got interesting, the reporter was on site at a store with about 100 odd folks in line waiting, so being a bit smarter then the average news drone he proceeded to start talking to people in line and did a quick poll of the entire group, as it turned out only 8 people were there to buy a phone for themselves.

The rest were "scalpers", now this is not like the typical ticket scalping these folks were hired guns most were paid on average 100 bucks by someone that wanted an iPhone but did not want to stand in line.  As it turns out it seems people that have the money to drop 6 bills to have one of the first iPhones also have lives and decided in mass to outsource the task.

Now as you might imagine I would never stand in a cold line to buy any gadget, see a movie, etc.  I like most people am sane and have a brain, I know that the price is going to fall and in just a few weeks you won't be able to walk across the street and not trip on an iPhone.  Star Wars Episode III was just as good when I saw it in its' second week as when the camp out morons saw it on the first day.  I have never understood the fanatical response that makes people stand in line for stuff like this.  A concert or event that can "sell out", again I won't do it but I do get it, I understand but to be the first to buy a commodity, well, not this cat.

Yet seeing this story made me thing back two decades to when I was a teen age kid with no money.  Would I have stood in the rain from for a day to buy an iPhone for a guy who paid me 100 bucks to do it?  You bet I would have, that would have been good money to stand around at a time when I was killing myself to make 5 bucks an hour (minimum wage was $3.15 back then).   In short if you stood in line to part with 600 dollars to be the first to have an iPhone I think you are a total DOLT!  However, if you are some young kid that suckered 100 plus dollars out of a dolt to lazy to stand in the line himself, I say good for you, keep it up and find as many dolts as you can before the opportunity ends.

One thing this made me wonder about though was how people would activate the iPhone, again Fox News has the answer.  Apparently you buy the phone, take it home and then you have to sign up for iTunes and active it online at a special web site with an AT&T wireless contract (minimum two years of course).  You can get the full details from the Fox Story Here.

So if you want to see a smart business people today look no further then you closest teenager, 100 bucks for a few hours in line to pay a premium for something that will drop in price and be available everywhere in just a few weeks.  It is stuff like this that really tells me the future of business is in good hands, great job kids, stick it to the man!

~  Jack

Technorati Tags: iphone, apple, apple iphone, cellular, wireless, att,   itunes, mp3, media, online music, music downloads, scalping, fox news, dallas, fox 4

Popularity: 8% [?]

Today I was going through my RSS feeds and like many bloggers I monitor blog feeds for mentions of my name and my blogs.  I was surprised to see that I was today announced as Crickees' Crush of the Week.  Anyway I am not sure what the criteria was to be selected but I got a kick out of being featured this way.  The concept of a something of the week type of feature intrigues me and I may borrow the concept in my own unique form in the coming weeks.

I don't think it is a coincidence that last week I joined the Crickee Community on MyBlogLog, anyway thanks Crickee, it is good to feel loved!

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: crickee, jack spirko, crush of the week, mybloglog, blogging, blog awards

Popularity: 7% [?]

Today I was discussing things with Mark Barrera and we were talking about blocking IP addresses of clients on Google Analytics so visits to their own site would not count.  This is really simple to do with Google Analytics. In your Google Analytics account, you can enter up to 4 IP addresses to "block", doing so asks analytics to not track or record any visits from those IPs.

This way a client that spends a lot of time on their own site won't skew the data from the site.  This is a great idea and if you use analytics you should be blocking any IPs you regularly visit your own site from.  If you don't know your IP just visit whatismyip.com and they will tell you exactly what IP you are on.

Now this got me thinking about how sometimes adSense publishers get in trouble and are accused of clicking on ads on their own site.  Clearly this is a problem when some do it simply as fraud to steal money from advertisers, yet I think many new publishers are simply curious about who is advertising and sometimes they might even have an interest in actually buying from the advertisers on their sites.

So my thought is why not let publishers self block IP addresses?  Just as you can put in your own IPs into Analytics, you could put in your IPs into you adSense Account and simply have google not count clicks from you own IP in adSense.  Clearly there is no technology hurtle to be overcome here.  This would be good for everyone as far as I can see.

First publishers could click on ads with no fear on their own site (provided they blocked their own ips) and easily see who is advertising and what they are selling.  This would also help with competitive ad filtering so publishers could keep track easily of who's ads were showing and what was being sold.

Second advertisers would experience less accidental click fraud.  I myself have clicked an ad or two on occasion, I have never done so intentionally yet we all loose track of the cursor on occasion.  Some times you are just clicking to get the wheel in your mouse to work and oops of you go.  Any way it would be a simple way for Google to help protect advertisers.

Third publishers over time would actually on occasion buy from their own advertisers.  I have plenty of ads on my sites that in no way compete with me, they are similar but not direct competition for what I sell.  If I could check out those advertisers from time to time, well who knows I might buy a thing or two.  With over a million publishers out there that is a pretty big demographic to sell stuff to.

In any event I just can't see any down side to this in theory Google is already tracking the IP of its' publishers.  So why not, what good reason is there for Google to not do this?  The only reasonable options are

1.  No one at GooglePlex has thought about this

2.  Google figures some click fraud is good for revenue

So what do you think about this idea of letting individuals submit their own commonly used IP addresses and just not having their clicks count on their own ads?  Of course only the honest publishers would use this, so what though that means the honest people are protected and as for the scam artists they are already trying to work the system.  This wouldn't give them any type of advantage.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: google, goog, adsense, click fraud, ecommerce, pay per click, ppc, search engines, search marketing

Popularity: 7% [?]

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a new graphic in our right hand margin.  That is the logo from PayPerPost that says "Hire Me" which is part of the an new innoviative way that PayPerPost has given its bloggers (affectionately known as Posties) to make money with their blogs.  The new program is excellent for me as a blogger because it lets me set my own price for a client that may want something specific on my blog that does not fit the general opportunity method.  

For instance an advertiser on my blog may want me to relate their story to some of my prior posts.  This gives the post a lot more traction and will give the advertiser a better overall result.  

The bigger benefit to both the advertiser and blogger is this arrangement is financial.  Where as most of PayPerPost's competitors like ReviewMe charge 50-100% markup and keep up to half of the bloggers rate, PPP Direct only charges a 10% fee, 5% of which goes to transaction fees for PayPal and credit card processing.  Of course this give the advertiser more bang for the buck all while letting the blogger earn the majority of their own revenue.  Honestly I am totally sold on PayPerPost, not only do I blog for them I also hire other bloggers as well.  This is yet another example of why.

You can get an overview of the Plan Here

or 

Watch a video explaining it here 

If you have ever thought about blogging or PayPerPost I highly recommend getting signed up, it is a great way to blog about interesting subjects and monetize your blog.  Likewise if you have considered advertising with them let me say I can not recommend them highly enough.  I have run several campaigns, my seo results have been exceptional and the system has worked flawlessly.  Finely note that this is in fact a sponsored post paid for by PayPerPost. 

So why does that matter?  Well, think about it this way, PayPerPost is willing to spend their own money, to pay their own bloggers and in effect buy from them selves.  There are a lot of companies that could learn from this, companies willing to buy from themselves are generally worth doing business with.

 ~ Jack

[tags]payperpost, pay per post, blog, blogging, paid to blog, blog for money, payperpost direct[/tag] 

Popularity: 6% [?]

I am going to do something a bit different and I hope something that will be seen as a bit creative today.  I am going to post a list of my favorite Business, Internet Marketing and SEO blogs.  These are all blogs I read every day (or at least as often as they are posted to).  I have each in my RSS Feed Reader and comment in and on them often.

Each is there because they are not the same old same old, they are not regurgitation of other individuals creative thoughts.  So what right?  Sooner or later everyone posts a list of favorite blogs right?  But oh you should know Crazy Jack as Neil Franklin calls me by now, I never do the same old thing.

So here is how this works, the following list is not just my favorite bloggers it is also a call for guest postings.  Each blogger mentioned has the opportunity to submit to Comtech News as a guest blogger one story on ANY SUBJECT they choose.  Hold on it gets better!  I will be creating a category called "Guest Posts", this category will be limited to 15 total posts for the LIFE of my blog.   Now 15 just happens to be how many posts each category page on this blog has.

Got the picture yet?  Each guest blogger will get a FULL POST (as in full text) on a page that will only be one page below the main index of my blog.

Further the post may have as many links with any and all anchor text the poster wants to include (no porn and no pharm are the only restrictions) to as many sites as they like.  In other words they get all the link juice they want under their full control.

Now here is the real creative part.  I am not going to notify this list of bloggers, not by email, not by phone and even the ones I know and work with daily, I ain't saying a word to any of them.  Most of these folks have egos and monitor their blog names and proper names on Google Blog alert and some on Technorati.  So all I will be doing is listing them here and including them in my Technorati Tags.  I will then rely on their own monitoring of their own names or the fact that a lot of them know each other and may tell each other or basic buzz.

In the end we will see how many respond to this post and take the opportunity to post and harvest my link juice.  I will limit the positions to the first 15 and only the first 15 of these bloggers to comment here and ask for the opportunity to submit an article.

So with out further delay or rambling here are my top SEO, Internet Marketing and Sales Blogs and the Bloggers from them that I want to hear from in no particular order,

1.   Niche Marketing - Andy Beard

2.   Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal

3.   Shoemoney - Jeremy Shoemaker

4.   Graywolf's SEO Blog - Michael Gray

5.   SEO Blackhat - Quadzilla

6.   Blue Hat SEO - Eli A 

7.   The Mind of Neil Franklin - Neil Franklin

8.   Web Guerrilla - Greg Boser (well when he bothers to post one of the seo rockstars members)

9.   Oilman - Tod Friesen - (the other seo rockstars podcaster)

10.  Blog Maverick - Mark Cuban (come on dude I helped design your Broadcast.com Data Centers)

11.  Marketing Maestro - Josef Katz - (Marketing Maestro is part of Donald Trump's Trump University) 

12.  ProBlogger - Darren Rowse

13.  Seth Godin's Blog - Seth Godin

14.  Selling To Big Companies - Jill Konrath

15.  Blogging, Internet Marketing and Social Traffic Generation - Andrew Wee

16.  Make Money Online - John Chow

17.  SEOMoz - Rand Fishkin 

18.  ProNet Advertising - Neil Patel 

19.  The Business of Blogging and New Media - Chris Garrett 

20.  Gadgets, Google, and SEO - Matt Cutts

21.  Church of the Customer Blog - Jackie Huba and/or Ben McConnell

22.  Mind Valley Labs Ecommerce Research - Mike Reining and/or Vishen Lakhiani

23.  Beanstalk SEO Blog - Dave Davies 

24.  SEO Book - Aaron Wall 

25.  The Mind of an Internet Marketer - Mark Barrera

So how will this work and what are the rules?

1.  Again I am not contacting anyone direct the bloggers listed will have to hear about this from a google alert, technorati tag or a friend.  This is the experiment part, who pays attention to their own name.

2.  If you are listed and want to post, comment about your thoughts on my experiment below to reserve your space.  I listed my favorite 25 blogs but only 15 get to post.  Once I have 15 of these bloggers who claim a spot the opportunity closes.

3.  After you claim your spot email your article formated the way you want it with all the links you want included.  Email it to guestproject@comtechnews.net an email that I will shut down as soon as the project is over.  Take that spammers! 

4.  Your post should be something you would publish on your own blog.  You should also not send me one of your old posts or articles, please provide a new article or post.  Those are my only quality requirements.

5.  I will set up a user name for you on our blog, if you send me a picture I will include it with your post as well and if you have any interest we can discuss further guest blogging opportunities.  If not enjoy your one post and your place on the permanent page of guest bloggers.

So there it is!  What I think is a pretty orginal idea, so if you know any of these folks let them know about it.  If you were listed and you do comment and claim your position please also tell me how you found out about this post, Technorati?  Google Alerts?  You Monitor My Feed?  Someone told you? etc.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: niche marketing, andy beard, marketing pilgrim, andy beal, shoemoney, jeremy shoemaker, graywolf, michael gray, seo blackhat, quadzilla, blue hat seo, eli a, neil franklin, web guerrilla, greg boser, seo rockstars, oilman, todd friesen, blog maverick, mark cuban, marketing maestro, josef katz, donald trump, problogger, darren rowse, seth godins's blog, seth godin, selling to big companies, jill konrath, andrew wee, make money online, john chow, seomoz, rand fishkin, pronet advertising, neil patel, the business of blogging and new media, chris garrett, gadgets google and seo, matt cutts, the church of the customer, jackie hub, ben mcconnell, mind valley labs, ecommerce research, mike reining, vishen lakhiani, beanstalk, seo blog, dave davies, seo book, aaron wall, dosh dosh, dosh, maki

Popularity: 100% [?]

So I am on to topic 4 of my Blogging Without The Internet experiment.  In case this is the first time you have read one of my posts in this series I am on vacation and writing from my get away place in the mountains just north of Hot Spring Arkansas.  It is beautiful 5 acre place sitting about 1000 feet above the surrounding valley.  The road that leads to it is gravel and probably will not see blacktop for a decade or more.  As you might imagine there is no hope of DSL, no Cable TV and I don’t keep a phone line up here as I only stay here on occasion.

Hence much to the delight of my wife we have no internet access from this location.  However, I have noticed that in town there are a ton of nice hotels all of which have free wireless internet access.  In addition I would guess 50% or more of the town and surrounding economy’s income is based on tourist dollars.  You name the activity and there are people here offering it.  From bike rentals, to boat rentals, guided fishing and even stuff like town tours and craft markets if you want to do it Hot Springs, Arkansas has it.

Now this is not unique to Hot Springs, there are hundreds of small towns in rural America with similar situations.  As for Hot Springs, I have looked at the Chamber of Commerce site and some sites that feature the area.  They are ok but no better then just ok.  Nothing substantial, nothing really meaty that a potential visitor can really dig into and really know what to expect from local vendors, etc.

Moving onto restaurants, good luck getting that info online, especially about the really cool unique local establishments.  We have been to good ones, we have been to bad ones and the problem is without a guide you don’t know which is which until you eat at them.  Some are really pretty good, but over priced for the food and service level.  Either way on a vacation your time is precious and choosing a bad restaurant or fishing guide really sucks, trust me because I have been there and done that.

Oh and if you are vacationing here and like to have a few adult beverages you need to know a two things.  First that many of the surrounding counties are dry (no beer, no wine, no nothing) so if you are staying, let’s say, on the west side of Lake Ouachita for instance you better stock up in advance of crossing the county line.  Second and perhaps more important, if you want beer or wine for a Sunday cook out or camp fire you had better buy it on Saturday or bring it with you.  Thanks to some remaining archaic (and stupid) blue laws kept in place I imagine by the “Jesus People” you can’t buy beer anywhere in the state of Arkansas on Sundays.  (Didn’t Jesus drink wine?)

Now that is just a smattering of the things a potential visitor would want to know about Hot Springs before showing up.  This has me rethinking the concept of a local search marketing campaign.  A good SEO who actually lived here (I will some day) could dominate this market and I do mean totally own it.  You would have to start the project with out selling space at first; you would need to build it (gasp) on content.  However, you could build far more then a site, you could build a network of sites.  Topics including

• Dining
• Outdoors
• Shopping
• Betting (yep no beer on Sunday but you can bet on the ponies)
• Relocation (the Chambers site blows, you could dominate it)
• Banking and Loans (redundant? Nope be creative)
• Business Set Up (permits, tax issues, etc)
• Services and Utilities

Now what I am describing is not the scatter shot 500 cities sub-domain technique that I have actually used myself.  No I am talking a massive and consistent campaign around every facet of a local small town for visitors, residents and potential new residents.  A large network of interlinked sites worked on daily as a primary business to the point were anyone putting anything in from of Hot Springs, Arkansas would find you.

Again this can be done in hundreds if not a thousand small towns and even mid sized cites across the US.  Sure you could do this for Philadelphia, Dallas or Atlanta but the competition is a lot tougher and the community a lot less accessible.  See such a project would do best by really digging into the community and forging relationships off line with the local businesses.  Selling leads, advertising and cutting joint venture deals. 

So if you are off to build a network of sites on Hot Springs, Arkansas as soon as you finish this let me say WAKE UP!  Unless you live here, you have missed the point!  Look around for the closest community that fits this model of low competition high return to you.  Find one you actually love the way I love this place, one you know better then most and a place where you have a genuine love for the people that live there. Yes, despite the blue laws I love this area and its people.

Dig into such a community and put in say 4 hours a day for 6 months and if you know what you are doing I guarantee you can own the market.  You will have to front end a lot of effort before you start selling ad space and cutting deals.  You will need to do some generic lead generation, new letters, etc.  In the beginning your income will be mostly adsense or something like that.  Yet in time with a real domination of the market you can swing all the deals you want. 

This is a the type of project that will require a ton of work at first and some investment as well.  Yet I believe if you really know such a market and you know even the basic fundamentals of SEO you can quickly dominate such a market with this approach and in time really make a lot of money as well.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: local search, internet marketing, hot springs arkansas, hot springs, arkansas

Popularity: 7% [?]

Written on June, 3^rd 2007 – Yet another topic in my blogging without the internet experiment.

I hear it all the time from would be entrepreneurs of both the off and online persuasion, “the next great idea”.  This is usually followed by a statement like, “if I just had the money/resources/support to get it done”.  Now don’t get me wrong creating a new product or concept can indeed be a great way to become successful and hell rich.

What I think gets lost on people though today is how many opportunities are sitting right out in the open.  I actually find it humorous when someone tells me their idea with utmost secrecy and swares me to absolute silence.  They are so worried someone will “steal their idea”.  The reality is you never own an idea, you may have one and you may or may not act on it but rest assured you are probably not the first to think about it.

I have done consulting and training conference calls and given out multi million dollar ideas, got all kind so “oh wow” reactions, yet I don’t think a single person has ever acted on any of them.  Ideas and opportunities are everywhere; the key is knowing what to do with them and how to maximize them!  In other words how to use an idea to create money!

Most people would do best to start out at least using existing systems to create initial success with.  Online this is even more the case.  There are so many platforms to build on today on the internet many are free or so low cost you have to be insane not to start off with them.

Things like

• Contextual Ads
• Affiliate Programs
• Social Network Platforms
• Paid Blogging Services

Just to name a few that can be interconnected to basically create money from nothing!  Seriously today anyone that can think independently and be just a bit creative can create income with an initial investment of only a few hundred dollars or less.

So my question for you today is what opportunities do you see and where do you look for them?  Just driving on the highway I see opportunities to exploit vertical niches.  I see them in bill boards, small business store fronts and hear them on the radio.

Do you?  Do you realize that what everyone is blogging about is not always the idea that can make you the most profit?  The key is to take the knowledge you can gain from blogs, internet marketing training programs, podcasts, etc and find your own niches to exploit. 

Here are two niches I have exploited online that I came by in the offline world

The American Idol Phenomenon - While watching American Idol with my family two years ago I saw a young guy name Chris Daughtry.  While I watched the show I am not a “pop music” guy.  I like rock, country, blues, jazz and even some of the older heavy metal as well.

Well when I saw Daughtry I just knew he was going to be huge and better I liked his music.  I put together a site, started building a mailing list.  Today I have about 30,000 fans on a mailing list.  I have made thousands on Google adSense and Yahoo Publisher off the site and sold thousands of CDs. 

Part of the lesson is this was a side project, one that added more income to my Schedule C last year then many middle income Americans earn in an annual salary.  Yet as a side project I had to pick something I liked.  This year I picked the winner (Daughtry did not even win when he was on) in the try out phase but no one on the show reached me personally so I did not put any effort there.  There is a lesson there as well, do something you take some personal interest in!

My Inexpensive Wine Site – Three years ago I was going through the pain of annual taxes with my accountant.  Despite prepayments and extra withholding I had to pay in a lot of additional taxes.  I hate taxes; I think that governments (all governments) are the biggest waster of resources and money on the planet! 

How does this relate to wine?  Well my accountant started to point out that I should look for more things I can deduct.  One of my solutions was to make a simple wine review site and review bottles of wine at or close to the 10 dollar price point.  This was easy I drink wine often and while I do at times drink more expensive wines I tend to drink mostly everyday wine.

I also knew that good reviews of lower cost wine were hard to find and that the typical “89 points, flavors of plum, tobacco and anise”, etc were not much use to many people who just want to know what wines in their price range are good, what foods they pair with and what wines they are similar to that they may have tried before.

So I created my own review method for inexpensive wine based on

• Not Recommended
• Recommended
• Highly Recommended
• Highest Recommendation

As scoring levels these are much easier for a novice to understand then say 84 or 91.   I started to review wines, keep track of the cost of the wine and put adSense on the site and added an email list.

So what was the real goal?  To loose money at least on paper anyway I figured I would make some money but never cover the cost of the wine.  The reality is the site soon was ranking well, (currently number one on Google for “inexpensive wine”) my list grew and I got tons of long tail traffic all because of the names of the different wines and people searching by brand.

I do this type of thing all the time with fun little side projects for myself.  A lot of my friends are impressed; they think I am some sort of “Internet Master” that uses complicated technology the average person can’t understand.  The truth is both of these projects could have been done by an 8^th grader of average intelligence.  OK well they can’t buy or drink wine but you get my point.

The key was simply doing something I enjoyed and doing the basics of SEO, Revenue Optimization, Blogging and List Building.  Neither was really done the “right way”, I just did not have the time to do them the way you should really do a project, yet they make money, even when I tried to loose money with one.

Neither required me to build a new platform, hire a programmer or raised a dollar of venture capital.  Sum total (except for the wine which I would have bought anyway) I have less then a hundred dollars invested in the two combined so I did not need a lot of money.

These are just two examples of how you can build successful revenue streams and leverage trends with out slugging it out with the heavy hitters of Internet Marketing or mortgaging your house for investment capital.   So what opportunities have you found or do you see around you that can be exploited?

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: internet marketing opportunities, income opportunities, marketing, contextual ads, adsense, yahoo publisher, google, paid blogging, social networking, social media, web 2.0

Popularity: 7% [?]

OK so I have made some comments both positive and negative about Trump University and the Trump Blog.  I have also made a great new friend in the process, Mr. Josef Katz (Director of Marketing for Trump University).  We have been since trading ideas and and some suggestions since then.  During that time Josef mentioned they would be launching a new blog called Marketing Maestro.

The new blog  is a lot less formal then the official Trump blog and is a collaborative effort of many of Trump's people commenting on various marketing and sales techniques.   I have found many of the new posts, great reads.  Some of my favorites thus far include,

• Client or Customer
• If You Can Verbalize It, You Can Write It
• Judge, Jury and Web 2.0?

So far the new blog is off to a great start!  I would recommend adding this feed to your RSS reader and be sure to note it is a seperate feed from the main Trump blog.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: donald trump, josef katz, marketing maestro, blogging, trump university, trump blog, marketing, sales, business advice

Popularity: 7% [?]

Written on June, 3^rd 2007 

It’s about 7:30 on a beautiful Sunday Morning in the Arkansas Mountains as I write the second post of my Blogging Without The Internet series.  Today I started thinking about what it was like back in 1998 when I really started to get into Internet Marketing as a newbie.  In a lot of ways it was easier back then, there was less competition in the Search Engines and if you really knew what you were doing you could dominate competitors fairly easily.

However, as a new person you do not know what you are doing and there was very little information of any real value available to get started with.  There was a ton of the same churn em and burn em, fast money BS that clog our spam filters today but almost no really good information. (oh yea and we did not have spam filters in 98)

Today just by reading blogs like Search Engine Watch, Gray Wolf’s Blog, Andy Beard's Blog and may I humbly suggest ComTech News you can learn more in a few weeks about what really works, then a new person in 98 could even dream of.  (oh and there were very few blogs of any kind in 98)

Still that is only a small part of why you have it so good today.  The real magic of today is the simple number of ways there are to make money even if you are almost clueless.  Think about programs like Google adSense, Yahoo Publisher, Pay Per Post, Amazon.com, Click Bank, Commission Junction and the countless others that were not even thought of yet.

When I started out I worked like crazy, I wasted money, I bought junk and I still did not give up.  After about 120 days of hard work and hundreds and hundreds of hours of effort I got my first check, the amount – $67.00.

Contrast that with starting out and making your first check today!  A new person could buy a domain name or two, set up a few blogs or sites and do some adSense and some postings for PayPerPost and in their first 6 months easily earn some decent money.  Not necessarily enough to quit the day job but honestly with a couple hours of work a day you can change your tax bracket with the internet today with in half a year. 

As some of you know I and my partners recently built a company to teach internet marketing called Marketing ICE  that provides seo tutorials and internet marketing training.  I decided now was the time for such a product because I can honestly tell a person who has tried and failed you can succeed today and look them in the eye when I do it.

Today if you are a new Internet Marketer you have it made!  Whether you are looking to build a second income, a small company, a large corporation or just expanding your marketing reach as an employee in a marketing department there are more options then ever.  From revenue sources, to educational programs to sources of traffic today’s internet makes 1998 look like the dark ages indeed in SEM terms the 90's were truly, the dawn of civilization.

So how long have you been online?  What do you remember about your early days of Internet Marketing?  Let me know and tell me what you think about how far we have come.

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: andy beard, gray wolf, michael gray, search engine watch, internet marketing, affiliate marketing,   Google adSense, Yahoo Publisher, Pay Per Post, Amazon.com, Click Bank, Commission Junction, blogging

Popularity: 6% [?]

Written on June 2, 2007

This is my first topic in my blogging with out the Internet experiment and to get started I am going to rely on my copy of Website Magazine.  It just happened to show up yesterday on my way out of the house for vacation and a cover story called SEO Building Blocks caught my attention.  Happily I shoved it in my PC bag for reading while relaxing in the mountains.  Yes SEO’s are weird people, I am aware of this.

Anyway I went through the article and it was more of the same old tired stuff.  Bla, bla meta tags with nothing about how title and description effect CLICK THROUGH RATES when done properly (I can’t be the only one that knows this!).  Yadda, yadda, CSS and basically any table use hurts SEO (Then why does my old table based Broadband Phone Site kick so much ass in one of the most competitive niches in the world?)

Ok I am being to hard on the author, sure I know all this stuff and I can poke holes in it and so can many good SEO’s, however these articles are not really for us they are for the typical corporate reader trying to learn about SEO and Internet Marketing in general. 

Now what drove me nuts in this article was the side story on Black Hat SEO.

Why must every article on SEO state that Black Hat is evil and to stay away from it wholesale and then go on about techniques that real Black Hats never bother to use?

It just drives me nuts!  Here we go again, key word stuffing, autobot blog spam and doorway pages!  Ok I am black as they come in some of the stuff I do, I don’t do any of these things, why, they are pointless. 

The author even seems to indicate that if I build a whole network of sites rather then just one and leverage them into common niches that, that is black hat.  My friends that is not black hat, that is smart marketing.  It is also the business model of companies like Yahoo, Google and MSN!  It make’s me think of Stoey Griffith from the T.V. show family guy when he says, "do you even hear yourself talk".

What we in the real black hat world really do is test the engines, push the envelope and find out what works.  We stay ahead of the curve, we know what gets you toasted and we don’t do it or if we do we do it so no one can tell we were the ones that did it.

What all the lily white hat people need to understand is two main things.

First - if you are not a black hat SEO, you don’t know anything about it.  You can’t know from the outside you see what you want to see.  You see what you can understand and you can’t really understand how the true black hat world works from the outside.  So the best thing you can do if you don’t want to go into this world is stay silent on it.  Not because I say so but simply due to the wisdom of an old saying, “It is better to be silent and thought a fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.

Second - the main people that condemn or advise against black hat techniques are those I mention above that don’t know anything about it.  What they really hate about black hat is that the black hat community is constantly kicking their butts in the SERPs!  They get annoyed that we can take rankings at will for so many terms.  They point out that we get caught sometimes but leave out how getting caught is part of the process.

You see part of black hat is seeing where the line is so you can walk the edge of it.  My job with a client is to do everything that works to make them a success, not 50, 60 or 70% of the way but 100% of the way.  Now I am not about to risk my client’s domain or brand with out first pushing my own intellectual property to the edge so I can define it.

I will also do things to protect a client and pass traffic to them with out getting them caught. 

So where does this black hat term come from anyway?

I guess reality is it goes back to the old stereotype about the good guy wearing the white hat and the bad guy wearing the black hat in western lore.  Yet the reality is the first technology “black hats” were computer hackers that pushed programs and security exploits to the edge.  Most were actually good guys, working with companies to make their programs better, more stable and more secure.

They were not shunned by main stream programmers, quite the opposite they were and are considered the elite.  Somehow the term but not the respect got carried into the SEO realm and "black hat" became a slang term a bunch of amature spamming techniques.

So I am off my soap box now I just wanted to really explain how far off the mark these people that constantly warn against black hat are in more ways then one. 

So what is your opinion of black hat and what do you base it on?  I don’t fish for comments in my blog often but this is one that really could lead to great discussion. 

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: seo black hat, black hat, seo, black hat seo, spam, serps

Popularity: 5% [?]

Written on June 2, 2007

Ok this is going to be an interesting little experiment.  I am typing this brief post while on vacation at my second home up in the mountains of the Ouachita (pronounced wash-a-ta) Forest in Arkansas.  It is a beautiful place sitting on a ridge top at about 1100 feet of elevation.  I can see for miles in several directions. 

I have all the conveniences of my home in Arlington, Texas and the drive is only about 5 hours, it is the perfect escape.  Wait!  Did I say all the convenience of home, well one thing I don’t have is an internet connection of any kind.

I have my Blackberry with my corporate email on it but just won’t clutter that with my personal email and the umpteen thousand mails a day that come to that one.  I could drive about an hour to the local Starbucks to do some stuff but hell what kind of “vacation” is that.

So each day I am going to do a blog post or two with no research behind it.  No idea what the rest of the SEO, Internet Marketing and Technology Communities are talking about.  When I get back on June 8^th I will cue them all to go out one a day until they are all posted.

It should be interesting to see what I can come up with while totally disconnected.  I do have the most recent versions of Search Marketing Standard and Webs Site Magazine with me.  They may stir some thoughts but looking at them, the topics are well all old news.

So enjoy this as we go forward and let’s just see what I can come up with all off the top of my head. 

~ Jack

Technorati Tags: blogging, without the internet,   blackberry, vacation, jack spirko, hot springs, arkansas

Popularity: 6% [?]