Monthly Archives: June 2007

Speedlinking – Blogging, PayPerClick Traffic, Search Engine Optimization and Google is Hazardous to Your Health

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Yaro Starak’s Blog Profits Blueprint and Impending Blog Mastermind Launch
Australia-based blogger Yaro Starak earns about $5,000 per month from his blogging efforts and has detailed some of his strategies in his just launched blogging blueprint (a free download).

The 5 Characteristics of Highly Effective PPC (Pay Per Click) Specialists
Clickz’s Tony Wright lists “five crossover characteristics that apply to virtually every successful paid search specialist in the market”

Social Bookmarking – What Have You Done For Me Lately?
Sleepyblogger Robyn Tippins relates how (and more importantly why) she shut down her company which generated $25,000 in sales in its first month of operation.

Getting the Word Out About Your Affiliate Program
Affiliate veteran and co-founder of the Affiliate Summit Shawn Collins gives tips to product owners and in-house affiliate managers about building buzz for their affiliate programs.

Wearing Google Shirts to an eBay Event Might Be Hazardous To Your Health
Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz brings you the latest. Whoever thought the field of search engines could be this dangerous!

Fantastic Four Character Survey
Which of the Fab Four would you like to be? Get 6 Free movie passes and a $250 Visa gift card. [US residents only]

The Apple iPhone: A Case Study in Eurphoric Marketing

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The Apple iPhone has got analysts all pumped up to stratospheric heights, and while it may or may not reach those optimistic projections, it represents a lesson and an opportunity for Internet Marketers.

apple iphone giveaway

With the impending launch of Apple’s much vaunted iPhone, a hybrid cellphone-computer-mp3 player, on June 29th, optimistic tech analysts like Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster has said: “We estimate they’ll do $15 billion in revenue with the iPhone, and $13 billion in computer sales (in 2009)”

At $500 a piece, that represents 30 million iPhone solds in 2009, coupled with the fact that the yet-to-be-launched iPhone is expected to outsell all Apple’s computers by a factor of $2 billion.

Is the analyst accurate? It’s hard to tell, though most analysts have a track record of being overly optimistic.

It could be seen as a proxy of market sentiment to the new Apple gizmo.

It’ll be a marketing coup for Apple to market it’s new device, dubbed the “Jesus” phone by some at $500-600, considering most cellphones are priced at $100 to $200 now.

Any bad overhangs from Apple’s previous product launches?

Can anyone remember the issue with the Apple iPod Nano cracked screens in 2005?

Apple has certainly pulled itself up the ranks with it’s Continue reading →

Internet Marketers, Are You On The eBay Money Train Yet?

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Forget your preconceptions that online auction behemoth eBay is a place to sell quirky Pez dispensers and broken printers, I did a survey of the market potential of the site for Internet Marketers and you’d be pretty pleasantly surprised by my findings.

Rather than recycle subjective opinions from blogs and forums, I went to Nasdaq.com and pulled eBay’s financial stats.

ebay financial statistics

San Jose-based eBay has certainly come a long way from its beginnings as a sole proprietorship in 1995.

In case you think it’s only holds sway as the dominant player in the auction space, think again. The addition of electronic payment provider PayPal and Internet telephony VOIP (voice over internet protocol) provider Skype, means that it is a force to be reckoned with in the e-payment and communications arena too.

The financials show that the 30% year-on-year growth to sales of $5.96 billion in sales last years and a $1.125 billion net profit, mean that it’s position as a digital exchange for products and services is pretty much cemented.

Especially when you look back and see two major initiatives in 2004:

  • The $153 million purchase of Germany’s Mobile.de, the biggest auto classifieds Web site, which brought eBayers a choice of 800,000 used vehicles
  • New York States choice to auction surplus items on eBay, rather than conduct its own auctions.

These and more recent intiatives have helped build up eBay’s standing.

In a recent IDC (International Data Corp) report “The State of the Consumer Digital Marketplace (Mar 2007)”, the “most important Internet companies” were analyzed, and the listing included:

  • Amazon.com Inc
  • eBay Inc
  • Google Inc
  • Time Warner Inc.’s AOL
  • Yahoo! Inc
  • Microsoft Inc.’s Online Services Business (OSB), the former MSN
  • News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media (MySpace)

What turned the tide for me was hearing from eBay specialist Adam Ginsburg during Matt Bacak’s Marketing Madness in Atlanta.

Adam’s sold $20 million Continue reading →

Friday Podcast Episode 9: The Internet Marketing Mental Game

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In this edition of the Friday Podcast, we look at Internet Mind Game.

Many newbies find making their first dollar online intimidating. But you can do a mind shift and see some interesting results.

[audio:http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/podcasts/WhoIsAndrewWee.com-friday-podcast9.mp3]

For the notes, click “more”… Continue reading →

Alexa Analytics Representative of True Web Traffic?

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Web analytics are a necesary part of your Internet Marketing operations because it gives you an idea of where your visitors came from and their behavior on your web page. The Alexa toolbar is one of the tools which I have covered previously, but recently it does not be giving you an accurate picture of my website traffic.

Here’s a shot of my blog stats stats from awstats (awesome web stats), the analytics program which comes with my Bluehost web account.

whoisandrewwee.com awstats

On a month-on-month basis, the stats are increasing from Jan to hit a high in May.

Yet Alexa reports:

alexa whoisandrewwee.com

A high in January, then plunge in April and a further plunge in June.

I’ve checked a number of sites too and their ratings seem to have Continue reading →

Apple’s Safari Browser For Windows – An Internet Marketer’s Review

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Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs threw down the gauntlet at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, announcing the launch of Apple’s Safari browser for Windows. The upcoming Apple vs Microsoft battle promises to be more exciting than Microsoft vs Netscape a couple of years ago. But what does it mean for Internet Marketers?

apple safari browser

For starters, the Apple browser is pleasantly looking.

In my book, Microsoft Internet Explorer is probably the ugliest browser. Mozilla FireFox is pleasant to work with, although Flock the Social Browser (loaded with Web2.0 functions) remains my favorite (and I’m composing this entry within a Flock window now).

Safari shows promise.

Among it’s features:

  • Tabbed browsing: (If you don’t have 30 open windows, you’re not a hardcore Internet Marketer…yet)
  • Built-in RSS Support: To monitor late breaking developments and changing content on blogs and social sites
  • Pop-up blocking (maybe not such a good idea, since you might want to view popups)
  • Enhanced search features

Safari is positioned to be the Apple’s “killer app” with supposed close integration between it’s upcoming pda/phone iPhone, iTunes and Safari in the works. But does Safari really work for Internet Marketers?

Worryingly, Safari has “Private Browsing” which blocks all cookies from being lodged. This means analytics tracking might not be as effective.

Even worse, for affiliate marketers, Continue reading →