ComTech News

OK guys it is valentines day once again and if you know what is good for you then you will be doing something nice for that special lady in you life.  Forgetting Valentines day is a good way for a married man to end up on the couch for a night or two.  Now we know it is a typical "Halmark Holiday" but hell if you are an Internet Marketer your lady probably puts up with enough grief to deserve something nice anyway.

What you don't want to be is one of those dolts scraping to buy something on the final day or picking up a rose from some dude at the red light just off the highway.  Take my advice, send flowers from an online florist. Of course send them to your lady's work place so their friends can see them get them.  I give a lot of advice on how to market on this blog but this little piece of advice may be the best ROI you will get our of any of them.  Women absolutely love and I mean love to recieve flowers in front of their girl friends at work.

You only have a few days left guys, get to it.  I can also tell you from experience you can't go wrong by using 1-800-Flowers.com.  OK I have done my duty my fellow marketer you have been reminded, forget at your own risk.

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I just came across this post by Mind Valley Labs.  In a nut shell here is the way to go about building your mailing list with your blog comments.  When a user comments on your blog customize the results page to prompt them to opt in to your mail list.

Seems like a simple mod and I will work on doing it with my blogs this week.  Should be a pretty easy thing to do in word press and I will post the exact how to once I get it figured out.  This is one of those "well duh" tip.  Something so obvious once you hear it but something at the same time no one talks about or seems to bother to do.  Great tip!  A simple and over looked form of email list building.

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Izea is working really hard to get the message out about Real Rank.  Which you can sign up for at IZEARanks.com.  I had my doubts about Real Rank in the begining but I really like the way this service is shaping up.  My biggest concen is in the beginning it looked like Real Rank was just something for bloggers doing PayPerPost or in the future those in Social Spark.  However, Real Rank is now open to any and all blogs including those that don't have any interest in PayPerPost or any paid blogging service.

The way IZEARanks works is by using a simple piece of javascript to collect and report a rank based on actual traffic. You can choose whether you want to display page views and visitors or just your RealRank.  Oh and to make it cooler Izea is giving away $1000 each week in February to the blog with the #1 RealRank (see the site for official rules).  Oh and if you are worrying about a Google Page Rank Spank (like ComtechNews got) for being in PayPerPost don't worry the code is different and again for use by any and all bloggers.

What is cool about Real Rank is it is based on actual traffic and visitor activity.  Unlike Alexa it tracks all visitors not just those dim enough to voluntary install the Alexa Tool Bar (spyware) into their browsers.  I sware AOL users are the only thing keeping data going to Alexa.

For example below is a screen shot of the Real Rank for Comtech News covering a three month period, as you can see Google's smack on my page rank number has little effect on my visitor count.

I really hope to see a true alternative to Google PR come along.  Google is just getting to damn powerful.  For blogs at least Real Rank may be the way for that to happen.  So if you blog, install and try out RealRank.   I have done so on all my blogs and I am finding some interesting things about how they compare to each other beyond raw visitor counts and conversion rates.

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American Express has a program called "Open" that provides services, advice and a sense of community to their small business customers.  You have probably seen it advertised on TV.  Now some jerk inside AMEX just sent a communication to all Open members stating,

"Don't Waste Money on a So-Called SEO Specialist"

Now clearly this dolt must have had a bad experience that was quite honestly probably with a "so called" SEO but to make such blanket statements is beyond moronic.  This would be like oh I don't know perhaps…

• Having a crappy Doctor then advising all your contacts to "not waste money on a so called Doctor"
• Having a dentist that does a poor job then advising all your contacts to "not waste money on a so called Dentist"
• Buying a car that ends up being a bad buy and advising all your contacts to "not waste money on a so called car"
• Having a bad date and then advising all your contacts to "not waste efforts on a so called date"

This is all absolutely just plain stupid and morons that make such remarks simply show the depths of their ignorance!  If SEO is a waste then why in the hell does American Express themselves put so much effort into Search Marketing and SEO.  The actual source of the article is some group of idiots called "The Cuban Council" who I won't dignify with a link!

Mark Jackson over at SEO Watch wrote a very detailed account and an excellent rebuttal to it. You can read that in full here.

By the way AMEX I just canceled my cards (corporate and personal) and won't ever use another Amex product until this stupidity is corrected with a retraction. 

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My partner Neil Franklin and I have been fit to be tied lately.  We have been talking about how hard it is to find a good sales person and started joking about making an offer that would be somthing like this,

Wanted, salesmen, no quota, no set schedule and you are not required or even expected to answer the phone, perhaps we might even fire you if you called a customer.  Of course you would still get a company phone, car, credit card, full benifits and in fact we would both just hand you are wallets.  It led to laughter and broke some of our frustration. 

That said may be I just need to take a good exotic trip, somewhere I have never been before like perhaps we should jump on a flight to Cyprus or some other really cool destination.  I was visiting a website called DialAFlight.com and started thinking about this.  Another place I have always wanted to fly to is Australia and they had some good deals for that as well.

Unfortunately I have too much to do right at the moment and won't be able to take a trip like that any time soon, may be few days up at the Arkansas ranch (my vacation home) but that will be about it. 

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I  have commeted on both the Positive Aspects of Real Rank along with the Negative Aspects of Real Rank.  If you read my negative post you will recall one of my issues was that for advertisers buying posts via PayPerPost/IZEA they specify RealRank in terms of 1-9.  Where a blogger with a real rank of 9 is in the top ten percent and one with say a rank of 1 is in the bottom 10%.

However if you go to IZEA Ranks and check out this blog you would see my Real Rank today is 187 at the time of this post and 199 as a weekly average.  What does that mean?  Well by the fact that I can get top 10% opportunities from PayPerPost I know I am top 10% so Comtech News has a Real Rank visible to an advertiser as a 9 or as high as you can get.   In trying to figure out exactly what 187 means other then being the 187th most trafficed blog in the system I took a look at the published top 100 Izea Ranks.  Here is what I found

Ogizmo.com is number one at the moment but they don't let you see their stats.

mon-blog-sexy.com - Warning Adult Content is listed at number two with the following - Average Daily Page Views this Week: 12,142, Average Daily Unique Visitors this Week: 2,430

pjlighthouse.com is the lowest ranked of the top 100 to disclose stats and is ranked today at 95 they have the following stats this week, Average Daily Page Views this Week: 1,030 verage Daily Unique Visitors this Week: 216.

It is interesting that my Real Rank is 187 with a average visitor count of 240 in the past week better then PJLightHouse.com at 95 but their page views move them into the top ten.  The formula is no secret for Real Rank by the way it has been published on the IZEA Blog.  No the issue for a blogger is there is no way (Until Now) to know where you stand in relationship to the rest of the field.  Why?  We do not know the total number of blogs in the system.

So if say there are 2000 blogs in the system a Real Rank of 200 or better is a "9" (top 10%) but if there are say 1000 blogs in the system a real rank of 200 is only an 8 or top 10%.  I am not sure why Izea does not publish both your over all rank and your single digit ranking numbers.   Ted Murphy (CEO of PayPerPost) actually commented here on this blog that they planned to.  Yet for now a blogger with a real rank of say 486 is left wondering where they fall in the system.  9?, 8?, What?  No way to know with out knowing the total number of blogs in the system.

This got me thinking!  If a person created a blog that was brand new and had zero traffic then the Real Rank of said blog would be somewhere very close to the total number of blogs in the system. 

AH HA!  So that is what I did and the blog today has a Real Rank of 6236.  Now the problem was I used a domain that I had a site on at one time and the site actually had 7 visitors so it is probably not the very bottom but best guess is Izea has somewhere between 6300-7000 blogs in the system now.  So if that is the case a blogger can figure out pretty close where they are at.  IZEA is probably not releasing this information for the time being because that number is relatively small in Internet terms.

I plan to now set up another blog that is devoid of all traffic and will keep an eye on its Real Rank and post on occasion and if Izea ever releases the total number of blogs we will see how close I am. 

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I have been doing a lot of posting for PayPerPost lately and it has as always let me blog about very cool stuff all while making some extra money.  What I love about PayPerPost is the way they are helping so many people make money.  To me the money I earn buys me some new gizmos for my boat or perhaps a case of nice wine or anything thing like that I happen to fancy.  To me it is kind of like just getting some cool stuff for blogging which I would do anyway.

However, while this extra money is just nice to have for me I know there are a lot of Bloggers that have had major changes to their financial lives because of PayPerPost.  I have talked to a lot of single moms and stay at home moms in forums that have been able to pay bills with out a second job just by doing some blogging each day.  I talked to one young man that has been blogging for PayPerPost and several other similar services and he has paid off 30% more of his student loans with his extra earnings then he would have by now with out it.

I am sure there are countless other stories like this.  If you blog for PPP please comment below and let me know what it has meant to you.  Despite my occasional critiques of Izea/PayPerPost I am a huge fan because of how benificial their impact has been for so many.   

The beauty of PayPerPost to me is the way they positively impact the lives of so many people.  In an age where corporation after corporation is taking advantage of people it is really nice to see a business model that simply must benefit others in order to succeed. 

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OK look I am not an "I told you so kind of guy" in most instances but I feel vindicated here and I just have to say it this time.  I reported back BEFORE ANYONE that some sort of deal was being brokered between Yahoo and Microsoft with MS being the buyer and the big Y being the bought.

I was told I was nuts, I was bashed for this opinion on the Search Engine Watch Forum.

I mean check out this post I posted back in April of 2006 - look at the lecture I got.  I even stopped arguing understanding not to "cast my pearls among swine". 

OK now check out my sweet, sweet vindication - Microsoft Bids 44 Billion to Buy Yahoo

I just feel like screaming you see, I told you so!

I didn't blog about this once, or twice, either.  No look at the following posts…

• Could Microsoft Buy Yahoo - 7 Reasons It Could Happen
• Microsoft to Buy Yahoo - Act 2
• Thoughs on a Possible Microsoft Purchase of Yahoo
• Microsoft to Buy of Partner with Yahoo

Now look will the deal happen?  No one knows yet but the deal is now on the table.  This is a 44 Billion Dollar deal though and what we know about 44 Billion dollar deals is they don't happen over night.  I would say this deal has been in the works for um I don't know 18-24 months at least.  So just when was I blogging about this?  April of 2006, that would be right at 21 months ago.

Now everyone is talking about this and acting like it is brand new and I am sure my prediction will be ignored or just called lucky.  Personally I am not an arrogant person and I generally don't care what people think of my opinions, I just wanted to go on record with this one. 

Just for the record the "I told you so" is mostly targeted at one individual on the SEW Thread which is now unfortunately closed.

So what do you think about this deal?  If it goes through what will it mean to search marketing as a whole? 

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Check out this ad preview for Pepsi featuring, What is Love  Provided by PlayPhone.com that offers ring tones, wall papers and games. The video is a parody of Saturday Night Live's popular "Night at the Roxbury" skit will keep people awake with a humorous take on the before-and-after effects of drinking Diet Pepsi MAX. There is also a behind-the-scenes look features Busta Rymes,  Missy Elliott, Enigma Haddaway and LL Cool J . The ad will premiere during the Superbowl and will probably be quite a hit.

PlayPhone.com is really pretty cool they leading mobile media company providing cutting edge personalization and entertainment content to mobile consumers anytime, anywhere. The company currently operates its own leading mobile entertainment destination at PlayPhone.com and powers subscription-based mobile portals for the world's top entertainment brands.  They were the first company to set up the direct to consumer model for ring tones back in 2003.  

So if you want to spiff up your cell phone with really cool ring tones, games and wall papers check out PlayPhone.com and enjoy the Super Bowl and the cool commercials that go with it.  Given this year will probably be another blow out for the Patriots the commercial may honestly be the hight point if like me you want to see the Giants win.

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The SEOmoz blog just published a great article on ways to help get your content Dugg and to the Digg popular page.  The primay method here revolves around time of the day, day of the week and proper category exploitation.  I won't go to deep into it and will just suggest that you read this article by Dave Naffziger on the SEOmoz Blog.

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I am a huge fan of lifelock for the protection it offers in defending against ID theft.  I wanted to blog about Lifelock because I understand how important protecting your identity is.

You may remember quite a while ago it was all over the news that the Department of Veterans affairs had an employee loose a laptop with over 26 million veterans private data including social security numbers.  Well, I just happen to be a veteran and a bit later I got a letter in the mail from V.A. telling me that my name and data was indeed on that laptop but I should just keep an eye on things and that I really "had nothing to worry about".

Oh?  So V.A. sent 26 million letters even though I had nothing to worry about.  Not long after that I saw a commercial where the CEO of LifeLock gave his personal social security number out on the Fox News Channel.  That was it I signed up and I certainly recommend that you consider LifeLock to protect your identity.  If the government can loose a machine with my data on it, they can damn sure loose one with your's whether you are a veteran or not your data is on many computers and in some cases most assuredly incompetent hands.

LifeLock protects your identity and if the system fails it is backed up with a million dollar guarantee.  Between that and the CEO publishing his own social security number I am sold on it. 

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