August 31, 2007 at 12:19 pm · Filed under Affiliates
Apologies for the low posting rate lately… ReveNews has been taking up most of my days and sleepless nights.
However, I’m happy to say that we’re relaunching ReveNews next week. If you haven’t seen the new site, it’s resolving all over the planet as we speak, so head over and check out the new design. There are still tons of bugs and little tweaks we have to make, but I’ve decided to leave the shutters off the windows so that you can follow along if you’re so inclined and watch the fixes as they happen.
I’m so excited that we’re finally on the new server, host, and platform (MovableType 4). I even have a new email addy (sam@revenews.com) for all of your rants, raves and v1@gra spams.
So, do check out the site and let me know what you think.
I’ve also got an incredible developer named David Larsen (who has been instrumental in getting this thing going) who is going to be looking for something to fill his time after we’re done with the relaunch. If you need a developer, he’s your man. Get in touch if you’d like his contact info.
August 29, 2007 at 4:12 pm · Filed under Affiliates
We could all learn a thing or two by paying attention to the marketing metrics and measurements that Facebook is sculpting…
As we indicated earlier, today we are introducing new guidelines that will change how applications are ranked in the application directory. Currently, the focus is on total number of users, but going forward it will be based on user engagement. This is an important step in the evolution of Facebook Platform which will help drive the growth and distribution of applications that focus on user engagement and utility.
Twitter Groups allows you to tag your followers into different groups. Then you can send a message to those groups without needing to send the message to each person one at a time!
August 28, 2007 at 11:59 am · Filed under Affiliates
Seems like August is the month of the revision for old group blogs!
Along with the impending revision of my beloved 10 year old ReveNews (as soon as the site resolves on the new host… LivingDot… we are good to go!), my favorite blog, Boing Boing, has just undergone a pretty major overhaul that points towards the future.
I’m writing this from Boulder, Colorado, which seems like a good place to make this announcement — it was in this town that Carla Sinclair and I launched bOING bOING as a print zine in 1988. During the past 19 years we’ve gone through many changes — from zine to webzine to directory to blog. Today, Boing Boing is changing again, in three exciting new ways: a redesign, the return of user comments, and a blog about personal technology.
I’m not one to shy away from early adoption (to a fault many times), but I don’t see the point in Chitika’s new Facebook app. In fact, it’s pretty disappointing to me on a couple of fronts.
I read about this on Jim Kukral’s blog where he’s linked to the Chitika application (give Jim a buck by installing it if you’d like to see what I’m talking about).
So, aesthetically speaking, did they just pull this image (and idea) from an old email campaign?? Sure reeks of 2003 email marketing to me. Great stock art guys. The kids are sure to love the enthusiastic thumbs up…
Let me see if I get this right… I tell people what I bought and encourage others to do so (by installing the app) in order to get a $1 commission?
Not only is this lame in terms of application standards on Facebook (where I manage my calendar, Twitter, play old NES games, upload videos, share music, even share my favorite LOL Cats), but it’s clearly not a feasible and longterm service for actually providing anyone with a profit. It looks to be (and I hope it is) an experiment to see “how viable” the Facebook channel is for Chitika. Actually, I hope that’s not the case because this is going to return some paltry results compared to what can be done within Facebook with a smart affiliate app or campaign.
Honestly, this app just reinforces the stereotype that many people (especially savvy geeks and early adopters on Facebook) have about affiliate marketing… that we’re all looking for a quick buck with no long term thinking.
I’m sure there will be ways for performance and affiliate marketing to grow and thrive on Facebook, but this isn’t it.
August 28, 2007 at 10:04 am · Filed under Affiliates
Vinny Lingham has put together a nice post on how Clicks2Customers and other companies in our space have been doing the sorts of things with CPA and paid search that Google VP Marissa Meyer has labeled ”the Holy Grail.”
It’s always fascinating that smaller teams with more built in flexibility and focus can accomplish what large companies stacked with PhD’s and Stanford grads can’t.
Nice post… head over to Vinny’s blog for the whole thing:
What Google realises, but often overlooks, is that affiliates have been successfully arbitraging CPC to CPA for longer than Google even begain doing paid search. We started Clicks2Customers in 2003 and that business quickly grew on the back of the fact there was considerably margin between CPC & CPA - and even today, there are still a number of affiliates out there that still do this very successfully. Clicks2Customers have since evolved the business to a CPA / Performance Marketing Agency, and are working more closely with clients than the traditional affiliate marketers. Our technology was built on the back of ROI creation from marketing campaigns based on CPC costs and therefore is far better aligned to what Google is trying to do, than many of our competitors.
August 27, 2007 at 7:20 pm · Filed under Affiliates
One more sign that blogging is but one facet of a smart and wise online marketing program that should include social networks (Facebook) and presence platforms (Twitter)…
After much consideration we?ve decided not to host the Blog Business Summit in Chicago this year…
On the Web Community Forum site, we?ll cover how people, businesses, and political campaigns are using technologies such as Facebook, Twitter and, of course, blogs to reach out to core constituencies and build communities. We?ll talk about best practices and great technologies - from WordPress plugins to Facebook applications - that enable community engagement.
August 26, 2007 at 10:20 pm · Filed under Affiliates
It’s all about quality and the dilution of relevancy due to SEO according to Robert Scoble. Search and discovery will continue to evolve, just as the web itself. The main question for marketers and those interested in these issues is whether or not platforms such as Google will continue to maintain its position as a network hub or whether other platforms with more relevancy will replace the Google hegemoy.
Scoble has some great points scattered throughout these videos, so watch with an open mind…
August 26, 2007 at 3:54 pm · Filed under Affiliates
I’m not sure Andy Beard will be a fan (had to slip that in there, Andy!), but you can now import your GMail contacts into Twitter to see who else has an account. There’s also a recently implemented search feature for finding friends and contacts…
Twitter has finally added the feature they?ve needed from day one: the ability to import your contacts from another service. For now it is limited to just Gmail, which should apply to a large proportion of the service?s early adopter user base. Enter your email address and password to see which of your contacts are on Twitter, or manually invite people to join.
August 23, 2007 at 2:33 pm · Filed under Affiliates
Just got this email from the Text Link Ads team. I don’t use TLA, but for those of you who do, this is a pretty significant change(Pranav clears it up in the comments below).
I wonder if this change to the redireting TinyURL service is an attempt to stave off the negative affects of paid links?
Sam, As a Text Link Ads affiliate we’re pleased to let you know that we’ve begun using tinyurl.com to shorten and secure our affiliate referral links.
** Please note that our old affiliate urls will no longer work in one week so please update today. Thank you!
August 23, 2007 at 12:39 pm · Filed under Affiliates
We’re almost there. The domain (revenews.com) should be transferred to the new host sometime today or tomorrow and the new design is getting close to being finished.
We have a few more tweaks to make, but this is a general idea of what the individual pages will look like:
