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By John Sylvester in Featured

A recent article in The Guardian newspaper claims that Rupert Murdoch’s online version of the Times is losing “almost 90% of [its] online readership”. Transposing business models of print media into online deserves an unrighteous kick in the pants

In general, websites are support mechanisms for bricks-and-mortar companies and the attempt to elevate and transpose these business models to online, as many have argued in the past, is ignorant and bordering on the insane.

Does Murdoch not realise that the newsstand of the new media model is Google; and why has he thought it wise to remove all his publications from it? In addition, the media industry has not seen fit to take account of a report by Peter Horrocks of the BBC that news corporations need to specialise. What is the point of putting your news behind a paywall when your competition is reporting the same news that doesn’t?

Google, Twitter and Facebook demand that online dissemination is open and searchable. Murdoch knows better, he thinks, even though it has been reported that he only recently learned how to use email. And where on earth do online news, that is openly copied on to other sites and blogs, resolve into bottom-line economics?

John Gapper of the FT argues that Erich Schmidt’s remarks at the Google Zeitgeist conference on how the company is trying to work with news groups, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp on new revenue models, is that “Google itself is agnostic”.

“Its attitude contrasts to the tendency of those such as Alan Rusbridger of The Guardian and Jeff Jarvis to equate innovation in online news with not charging. As Mr Jarvis wrote of Mr Murdoch’s “pathetic” web strategy, under which The Times and The Sunday Times will charge for online: By building his paywall around Times Newspapers, he has said that he has no new ideas to build advertising. He has no new ideas to build deeper and more valuable relationships with readers and will send them away if they do not pay. Even he has no new ideas to find the efficiencies the internet can bring in content creation, marketing, and delivery.”

At the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference last week, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller talked about the company’s efforts to put “paywalls” on more of its content. However, he did acknowledge that you do lose unique users when you put up a paywall, but mostly it’s people who were only reading a single story or video. He said advertising was holding up quite well.

Really, well the Guardian doesn’t seem to think so. “Based on the last available ABCe data for Times Online readership (from February 2010), which showed that it had 1.2 million daily unique users, and Hitwise’s figures showing it had 15% of UK online newspaper traffic, that means a total of 332,800 daily users trying to visit the Times site.

“If none of the people visiting the site have already registered, the one-on-four dropout rate means that traffic actually going from the registration site to the Times site is just 84,800, or 1.06% of total UK newspaper traffic – a 93% fall compared with May.”

According to his biographer Michael Wolff of Vanity Fair, “Murdoch has not used the internet, let alone Google (he only recently discovered email) and so he cannot possibly understand the dynamics, demands and opportunities of our post-industrial, now-digital media economy. I use the internet and teach it and write about it and I still can’t grasp the complete implication of the change. I don’t think even Google can.” That’s maybe because they’re agnostics. But I don’t believe that either as the “content-is-king” cliché is a defining feature of Google’s ethos.

And Jeff Jarvis, of the Guardian, chimed in with: “The hard truth is that news organisations will shrink or die. No longer monopolies or oligopolies, the barrier to entry to their kingdom and business reduced to an inch, they simply cannot maintain their old scale, the size and margins that the City demanded. A new ecosystem of news, made up of countless smaller players operating under varying means, motives and business models, will undercut the big, old institutions. The hard iron that once was their advantage – the presses and trucks – have now become a killing weight around their craggy necks.

“Murdoch is a stranger in a strange land. All he has left to do is build a wall around himself and shrink away, a vestige of his old, bold self. Who would have thought that we’d end up feeling pity for the man? It’s almost enough to make me want to throw him a few quid. On second thoughts…”

As witness to the futility model, Murdoch has just butted out of the newsstand on organics and has now turned to Google AdWords on searches such as “London Newspaper” with: thetimes.co.uk/Subscribe. Trial the first 30 days for £1, and experience exclusive online content.” But the Times doesn’t exclusively report on London. Are we stupid enough to pay him for it when The Evening Standard is free, and does?

Maybe it’s a little but like the music industry, where bands these days make CDs for roadshows but receive scant revenue from them. The focus of the new business model here is to sell everything else but.

Mashable, I thought, might have a take on it and I looked for a survey on the subject. The data was taken from a survey of 27,000 consumers across 52 countries: “…Nielsen also found that nearly eight out of every ten (79%) would no longer use a web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost. In other words, unless your organisation breaks lots of exclusive and important stories, charging for content will be a major uphill battle.”

The question is whether the Times is that exclusive, or is it just the case of an imprudent, anachronistic business model that relies on the vagaries of an old man?

V9 Design and Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) produce tasteful web design in Bangkok, Thailand, including ecommerce shopping cart solutions, with functionality that allows owners to set up and maintain their online stores.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

job searchWhat’s a job at the top of your field worth to you?

To unemployed advertising executive Alec Brownstein, it was worth around USD 6. That’s what Alec paid Google AdWords to get the attention of New York’s top advertising agencies and score himself two job offers.

Alec decided he wanted a job at one of New York’s top ad agencies. But to get an interview via the regular channels could take months. So he decided to bypass normal job application procedures and appeal to the egos of the Creative Directors instead.

How did he do it? He set up PPC ads using Dynamic Keyword Insertion that would appear whenever one of the Creative Directors Googled themselves, otherwise known as a *vanity search*. So a Google search for Gerry Graf, David Droga, Tony Granger, Ian Reichenthal or Scott Vitrone would trigger Alec’s ad to appear.

The ad read:

Hey [Director's Name]
Googling yourself is a lot of fun.
Hiring me is fun, too.

A click on the ad led to Alec’s site and contact details. According to Brownstein, nobody was bidding on the names, so he was able to achieve the top ad slots for around 10 cents per click.

The result? Alec scored interviews with 4 out of the 5 Creative Directors and job offers from both Ian Reichenthal and Scott Vitrone of Y&R Advertising. He took one of the offers and now has a permament gig at Y&R New York.

Clever eh?

By Kenji Sakamoto in Featured

There are many ways to advertise a business today. This is true both online and offline. However, many online and offline businesses are effectively using article marketing on the Internet with great results.

Therefore it’s important that you know how to write an article to achieve effective article marketing. In this article we will talk about a few tips that will help you do that.

1. Determine what is the primary reason you are writing your article. Articles are used for primarily for article marketing. However they can also be used to create blog posts, build web pages, publish in an online ezine and so on.

2. Write a catchy title including a keyword phrase you are targeting. This will help catch the attention of both the reader as well as a search engine. You can go to online directories and look at existing articles to come up with ideas for article titles. Titles that catch your attention will probably catch other people’s attention as well.

3. Choose a theme for your article that is in demand. Discussion forums are good resource places for possible article themes. Some of the hottest threads in the discussion forum will make for a very good article.

4. Keep your articles short and stay on theme. Keep your paragraphs short which makes them easier to read on the Internet. A good way to do this is writing numbered list articles.

5. Include a well-written resource box at the end of the article. It should include your name, and a description about yourself or your website. Your goal is to get the reader to click on a link pointing back to your website or blog. If possible hyperlink keyword phrases as well as list your website URL.

6. Spend an adequate amount of time distributing your article. Getting your article into article directories is important because that’s where people will be able to find it. For this reason you want to be sure and submit it to the top rated article directories. Search engine spiders these all the time and your article could be picked up and ranked for a specific keyword phrase.

7. Create a swipe file of well written articles and refer to those for article ideas as well as a reference point on how to write a good article. Swipe files are nothing new, but are very easy to fill up thanks to the Internet. These are several tips on how to write an article for effective article marketing on the Internet. The more articles you have online the more potential traffic they can bring you.

Kenji Sakamoto is the owner of Article Directory Online one of the most visited online article directories on the internet. If you are looking for a high traffic article directory, or content for your own website or newsletter visit it here.

By Frank Breinling in Featured

Social bookmarking is when you go to social networking sites and post your link for others to see. Not only can you post your favorite websites for others to see, but you can also go there to see what kind of interesting sites have been left by others. Almost any topic of interest can be found through social bookmarking. Their search engine tool allows you to type in what you’re looking for and have it instantly before you.

Social News

While some social bookmarking sites are designed for sharing links and all sorts of topics of interest, other sites like Reddit, Digg, and Propeller focus more on the news-related topics like sports, politics, technology, and similar topics. You’ll often find bloggers on these sites discussing some new current event or a breaking headline.

How Can I Benefit From Social Bookmarking & Social News

Search engines are great. There’s no doubt about it. They can provide us with information about almost any topic we’re looking for. The bad thing about search engines, though, is that when you type what you want into the search engine, you’re going to get so many results back, it’s difficult to find what the best site to view is. It can take literally hours to find what you’re looking for with search engines.

Social news and social bookmarking sites let you specifically focus on exactly what you want to see. Because new stuff is added all the time, you’re going to find the most current information as well as the most popular right on top. Many of these sites offer viewers the opportunity to vote on articles and links. If you’re looking for something on roses, you may find five different articles.

Four of the articles may only have a few votes whereas the fifth one may have a hundred votes. You can assume that this is the article that’s going to be the most interesting to you. If you were to put the word roses into a search engine, you’d have thousands of results to browse through.

Social bookmarking and social news sites can save you a lot of time.

The same can be said about social news. If you’re looking for some late breaking news about your favorite actor, search engines may not have the most current topic on top, but you’ll find it right on top in social news sites. What begin as a way to share your bookmarks and links with friends has turned into some fantastic social search engines.

Frank Breinling is a recognized expert in Affiliate Marketing. Here you can grab his FREE Report about Affiliate Marketing Ideas at breinling.com , his newest Project about Social Bookmarking you can find here, bookmarketingtraffic.com.

By Kirsten Hendrich in Featured

Communication between client and service provider is a vital part in the success of any campaign, or indeed any business relationship at all. Due to the nature of SEO, many clients will have quite a lot of questions and these should be dealt with right at the early stages, before a campaign has even begun. It is really important that clients are made aware of the fact that it can take a long time to see results, especially for new domains. It is also highly advisable to discuss suitable measurements of a campaigns success, for example traffic numbers, search engine results and so on. These will all have to be tailored to the work in question and every job will have its own individual needs and challenges. This article aims to point out five common questions, and how you can deal with them effectively.

1. Why Don’t I Have More Traffic ?

Many clients simply don’t know what they can expect with regards to traffic numbers. This is no fault of their own, but sometimes they can be disappointed by the traffic they receive from seemingly good search engine positions. Traffic estimates should be based on search volume and it’s important to clearly explain the huge difference in click through rate between a number one position and a number four position.

2. Why Don’t I Appear for This Keyword?

When clients first engage in SEO activities, it must be clearly explained that in order to even begin to rank well for certain keywords, each page must effectively target its own keyword. If you try to focus a page on too many different keywords, it will dilute the message and leave the search engines confused as to what the page in question is talking about. Therefore, unless you have a large website, there is a limit to how many keywords you can expect to rank well for.

3. My Local Directory Listing Is Outranking Me, Why Is This?

This is particularly troublesome for new and small websites. Quite often when a search is carried out for a chosen keyword, not only will you see your website come up, you will also see your directory listings appear. Sometimes the directory listings will actually outrank you. This is due to the fact that the directory probably has a lot more authority than you, and work will have to be done to boost the importance of your website above that of your page on the said directory. You could also try changing your directory listing to reduce its competitiveness.

4. How Long Do I Have To Wait?

Probably the biggest question of all, how long will it take and how long will I have to pay you for? It’s vital to make this clear right from the start. You have to explain that it will take time for your work to bear results. Honesty really is the best policy here. I would recommend preparing a client for anywhere between at least six to twelve months with a thorough check of progress being carried out every three months.

5. How Will Doing More Help?

This is a big one, especially if you are not getting the results as quickly as you may have expected. You may be going back to client several months down the line and suggesting yet more site improvements or link building efforts. Marketing a website should be approached with a long term view. If results aren’t going so well it may mean you have to revisit some of the website structure and address any technical issues that may be causing issues. Explain the from the offset and you should avoid digging yourself into any unnecessary holes.

To find out more about SEO, visit Go Search Marketing at the following website www.gosearchmarketing.co.uk

By Cedric Welsch in Featured

It’s a sad thing to know when you have a website developed at great cost and then it doesn’t get any visitors. When the launching party is over, then you begin waiting for any good signs, but soon you find out that the visitor counter remains at zero. If you’re one of these unlucky website owners, there is no need to despair. It’s probably only because you do not know how to drive free targeted traffic to your website.

The very first step you should take is to submit the URL of your website to the many search engines and search directories on the web. Overtime, most of the search engines will pick up your site, but this can take quite long. Search directories do not really crawl the web, so they won’t find your site. You have to manually submit it. The general search directories are important for another reason as well – quite a lot of the small search engines use directory listings for their search results.

Then you also get niche directories for specific interest groups. Should you for example have an affiliate website where you try to sell website hosting, you will find a large number of web hosting directories where website owners can submit their URL for free. Even if you are a blog owner, there should be more than one specific directory to which you can submit the URL.

Social bookmarking sites are becoming more and more popular. Many people are nowadays using them to locate what they’re looking for instead of the search engines, simply because the results are more targeted. With social bookmarking sites, you rely on your fellow web searchers to provide you with websites they deem important enough to visit.

A further great way to drive free targeted traffic to your website is by publishing a press release. There are a surprising number of free press release services where you can submit a press release about your company for free. They will not only publish it, but also submit it to other sites in their group.

Article submission is another way of promoting a website that is fast gaining popularity. The way this works is that you write an article about any subject, but preferably something that relates to your own site. You’re allowed to add a link to your own website at the bottom. You then submit this article to one or more of the various free article directories found all over the net.

Last but certainly not the least, there are the growing number of social media websites. Getting your own page at one of these means you can promote your blog or website for free. You can also network online and meet many potential customers. And what is very important is, your page will be included in their website’s search results, making it possible for potentially millions of visitors to find you – surely an excellent way to drive free targeted to your website.

Discover how I drive tons of traffic to my websites simply by writing simple articles: articlemarketing4traffic.com

Leo is an article marketing expert, freelance article writer, and link builder who is offering freelance SEO services: InternetMarketingClix.com

By Jerry Bader in Featured

It looks like branded video entertainment is the marketing battlefield for companies looking to engage their audiences. The recent success of Orbit Gum’s branded video entertainment campaign promoting their brand of chewing gum seems to have sparked some interest from other brands. It didn’t take long for the people at Dentyne to come up with a clever branded video of their own. This one combines a couple of geeks with a rap musical score in a very effective branded video campaign.

Check out the video for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ov1DDjHt8c&feature=player_embedded#!.

We told you branded video entertainment was the perfect Web marketing vehicle. It’s here and it’s clear that it is what Web viewers want and what they will accept as a new form of Web advertising.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

By Frank Breinling in Featured

Twitter is a brilliant way to drive targeted visitors to your Web site. You should not forget about other traffic sources but using Twitter is totally free and will definitely acquire a few more targeted visitors to your site. You got me right, I said free targeted visitors in the last sentence.

Nothing is better than a never endless stream of visitors. There are lots of ways for you getting free traffic to your Web site. But there is a huge difference between free traffic and targeted traffic. You could have heard about traffic generating websites sending out tons of people to your homepage. These offers are good to give your traffic stats a push but you will not actually generate a sale or find a prospect for your product. Visitors delivered to you by free traffic Websites will usually leave your Internet site within a few moments.

Targeted visitors instead are interested in the items or information you are offering on your Web site, prepared to break out their credit card! With my Twitter strategy I show you how to get targeted visitors ready to take action. It takes very little while and is simple to do.

What you will need in first place is a twitter account, naturally. I recommend avoid using your own twitter account. If you are having different niche sites create a single twitter account for each niche Web site you have. Please don’t leave the default twitter background and avatar, choose an avatar and background image that fits your product or info best, as it will show your followers that you care about your account.

The next step to do is to deliver content – business relevant good content. The majority of the content you will provide is created by others and will never include references to your own stuff. This may sound strange to you, but here I explain why we will do it.

Make sure to provide best content to your followers and unless you write loads of crappy content or outsource your article writing you just don’t have the cash and time to write all that quality content yourself in a short period of time. When you tweet your own stuff only on every occasion you will seem to be a spammer. Individuals will stop following you when you behave like a spammer. Incidentally, tweets are the short communications called that you send out with your Twitter account.

Second thing of the process is to build a landing page or helpful blog post about your business. This part will be the most significant and you really must ensure to supply good articles. But where will you find all the business relevant content ? Go and google for RSS feeds for your business content, copy the link of the feed and paste the link of the RSS feed to your landing page or blog post. Ensure to pick out high quality RSS feed content. That will make your followers trust you. When they trust whatever you tell them it will encourage them to click your links sooner or later. The links you place in your landing page or blog post is the origin to monetize the traffic you are receiving from Twitter. The MOST IMPORTANT idea behind is that you place links to your products or service you would like to share or sell. The writing in the displayed link should contain a strong anchor text that will call to action and make them click the link that will lead them to your cash site. Here you offer your product or information you want to sell or share.

So, the most important thing is to place a link to your money site at the end of your landing page or blog post. Ensure the link incorporates a strong call to action. The final section of this action will be to build up an email address from your visitors or to get in touch through a contact form or to even make the sale. Because now you are having a targeted visitor on your Web site seeking information. To catch their email address offer a free of charge business relevant ebook or report through an optin form. Once you have your visitors email address you can add it to your email list and feed them with any information or products of your choosing any time you like. Only imagination will make you stop. To automate your information or product emails simply employ an autoresponder of your choosing. Your email list will be growing and growing.

Every tweet you are posting will be of very high quality and will make your followers to believe in you. When people trust you enough they will make your tweets go viral and at this moment in time magic happens.

So, the most significant thing is to place a link to your income site at the end of your landing page or web log post. Make certain the link contains a powerful call to action.

That just about is it. The great thing about this is you will not have to spend tons of dollars to get rolling. As soon as you come to terms with the process this shouldn’t take more than about 20 minutes per day. Give it a try, it’s a superb way to drive targeted traffic to your Website.

Frank Breinling is a recognized expert in generating targeted traffic to websites. Find out fantastic ways of generating traffic with his FREE REPORT at http://mostwebsitetraffic.com , the newest Project TWITTER TRAFFIC EXPLOSIONS you can find at http://downloadrun.com

By Jerry Bader in Featured

In a new article “A Sound Approach to Marketing” by MP Mueller, published in “The New York Times” online version, Mueller states: “Sound can build such a strong emotional connection. And most of our purchasing decisions are made based on emotions. Leading brands know that and spend time and money getting just the right soundtrack for their large budget commercials. ”

Sound design, music, and audio effects are usually the last thing small and medium sized companies think about when they hire someone to create a Web video or when they try to create a video in-house; and that is a mistake. Slapping on some royalty free music clip or adding some hackneyed effect is not the way to make an emotional connection, build a brand, or engage an audience. If you want to learn more about how to use sound effectively check out the blog article, ‘How Sound Design Affects Customer Response and Action” at http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/blog/how-sound-design-affects-customer-response-and-action.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

By Forrest Yingling in Featured

With the current state of the world’s economy, people are routinely looking to do whatever they can in order to save money. People will go to lengths that they previously would not go to so they can save a buck. You can easily make yourself stand out from the competition by offering valuable coupons for your products and services.

Many owners and operators of companies large and small have a tendency to either forget about or overlook the use of coupons as a promotional and marketing tool. Coupons are often thought of as thing of the past, with memories of parents and grandparents huddled over a stack of newspapers, scissors in hand, searching for the next big bargain.

With the Internet becoming the modern marketplace and the slow death of the traditional newspaper, coupons have evolved beyond the print media. The online coupon has become a formidable method of promoting a business while simultaneously saving the cash-strapped general public some money and encouraging competition between businesses.

Coupons are a powerful way of branding and gaining publicity for a business. By highlighting sales and current promotions, you can drive quality traffic to your online store. Traffic originating from a coupon is the kind of traffic that leads to conversions and this is the type of traffic that an online storeowner needs to generate, especially in this current economy.

There are currently a number of coupon sites online and they are becoming increasingly popular. They make their money from selling ads on their sites because of the staggering amount of visitors that check out these sites in search of money-saving purchases. Since the websites are making their money by selling ad space, there are generally no charges or fees for businesses placing coupons on these sites. Not to mention, all of the stores that have coupons on these popular websites are receiving high quality backlinks to their site. This is a surefire way of building links, page rank and climbing up the SERPs (search engine results pages).

A smart coupon strategy is to create a coupon that directs visitors to your Clearance or Sale page where discounted goods are already listed. You do not even have to go out of your way to fabricate a special sale.

The use of coupons can be a highly successful method of promoting your online business. Coupons do not need to be thought of strictly in the traditional sense. There is a whole new market for modern coupons.

Forrest Yingling is the Marketing Director for WebNet Hosting, Premier Partner Miva Host since 2004.  WebNet Hosting provides fully PCI Compliant Miva Hosting with 100% uptime as well as e-commerce solutions and basic web hosting.

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