flyingrose/marketing

I highly recommend subscribing to this blog and this post is a good example of why. The number one question I get asked is "how can I make money online". The second most common question is "it is even possible". Yes, it is; however, you must sow before you can reap.

Most people are trained to do what they're told - so if there is no one to tell them they are "busy" but not "productive". If you wish to be successful you have to figure out what is important. If you want to make money online you have to figure out what activities generate money and do more of them.

Figure out what DOESN'T make money and do less or even NONE of that. Although simple in concept it is apparently more difficult than it looks mostly because we collectively and regularly allow greed to damage our most promising methods.

My solution is to figure out whose integrity is not for sale and who is willing to generously sow their time and talents and support their efforts. If you can't be supportive and least stop being a crab.

I do not have time to verify this story so if you know it be true or not I'd love to hear from you. I have been told that the way they catch crabs in the ocean is with an open top bait cage. After they eat the bait why don't the crabs just climb back out? The story goes that no crab can escape because the others will keep dragging it back in - the same way co-workers and others online refuse to support those who see an alternate path to success.

From the page: "There are many ways to make money online using free methods. When I say `free', it obviously means you do not have to spend any money of your own. However, these methods require spending a fair amount of time.

With these, you usually get paid in proportion to the amount of time and effort put in. Of course, for most, the key factor would be the rate your effort commands. This is down to your experience, portfolio and ability to negotiate rates which you feel you deserve.

I have, at one time or another, tried the following methods (some of which I still do), and recommend them for anyone with time to spend online and wish to make some money. Note that they do necessarily reward proportionately across methods - some pay more, some only offer pocket change. Depending on how serious you are, they do all add up at the end of the day."

Great list of popular tactics affiliates use. No wonder affiliate marketing has such a bad reputation. Quality linking is THE best way to become a super affiliate - and super affiliates are THE best way to grow an online business.

The affiliates sow wisely and reap the rewards; the businesses only pay for RESULTS. Check out affgoo.com [affgoo.com] for great affiliate information and programs. All of the wisest of my ppc clients have them managing their affiliate programs.

From the page: "Super affiliates now break into three basic categories:

* Search engine affiliates buy clicks at Overture and Google.
* Mass emailers send hundreds of millions of emails per month.
* Adware companies make ads appear in front of Internet users."

"By their actions you will know them." What do your actions say about you?

Traditional advertising primarily uses fear/solution or sex/identification with someone seen as "famous, sexually attractive, rich, etc." Here is an extensive analysis of what the author believes are the secondary and/or subliminal messages in Philip Morris ads for Marlboro cigarettes.

If you could see my perceptions of those American society worships you would be no more surprised than I am why Americans behave the way they do.

From the page: "Without any reservations, the author can state that no company makes more use of secondary imagery than Philip Morris Inc. [If you are interested RJReynolds runs a close second.] A very large proportion of their cigarette ads incorporate images that have nothing to do with their products. Some embedded images are fairly blatant, some are more moderate, like those above. On the left is an example of an extremely subtle Marlboro ad - but subtle only in terms of visual imagery, not meaning. Overtly, the ad epitomizes and glorifies the Marlboro cowboy, the freedom of the range, independence, self control, etc. Covertly it aims to instil or trigger anxiety, if not fear.

The ad itself, like a large proportion of Marlboro ads, is dark and sombre. In itself this coloring might convey negative messages, and trigger negative moods and smoking in some viewers. Fitting in with the sombre mood of the ad is a figure underneath the horses hooves, a figure that can only be described as the face of a figure from another world. Perhaps Hades, perhaps just from the world of horror movies, perhaps straight from the grave."

This ad is a great analogy for life: Creating is infinitely more time-consuming that destroying. Personally, this ad does nothing for me; however, I understand that I am not "normal".

From the page: "Setting the dominoes on the table at the start of the advert took a team of three experts two days, but it took just 14 seconds to topple.

Paul Cornell, the marketing manager for Guinness, said: "The ad is fundamentally a celebration of community.

"It shows an entire village coming together to create an awe-inspiring spectacle of toppling objects.""

Am I missing something here? It looks to me like an entire village came together to watch something they invested a lot of time in building get destroyed. And THAT really reminds me of the "game" we've all been playing.

{Note that my comments are not about the effectiveness - or lack-thereof - of this particular ad - only about what it "says" to me.)

Remember that most market research is done on Fortune 500 companies. Pooling responses from the largest corporations with those from small businesses is combining apples and oranges and expecting to get either pure apple juice or pure orange juice. Not happening.

If you are running or considering running pay per click campaigns using Google AdWords buyer beware. Do read up on the current challenges. I have posted many here and have far more at ppcthink.com [ppcthink.com] .

From the page: "Pay Per Click Is Popular, But Results Vary - OCTOBER 31, 2007 - Pay-per-click, but how much? - More than one-half of the US online retailers surveyed by NetElixir and the e-tailing group in October 2007 said that up to 40% of their orders now come from pay-per-click marketing.

As a result, nearly nine in 10 said they planned to increase their PPC budgets in 2008, with 30% planning increases of 26% or more, according to the survey results published in NetElixir's "E-tailer Pay-Per-Click Stress Study."

From the page: "Pay Per Click Is Popular, But Results Vary - OCTOBER 31, 2007 - Pay-per-click, but how much? - More than one-half of the US online retailers surveyed by NetElixir and the e-tailing group in October 2007 said that up to 40% of their orders now come from pay-per-click marketing.

As a result, nearly nine in 10 said they planned to increase their PPC budgets in 2008, with 30% planning increases of 26% or more, according to the survey results published in NetElixir's "E-tailer Pay-Per-Click Stress Study." "

Intermittent reward or punishment has a stronger motivational affect on behavior than consistent reward or punishment. Advertisers, governments, parents, and others who are inconsistent can elicit the most compliance through doing this. (The FEAR of anything is far more influential than the potential punishment and the DREAM (of hitting the lottery for example) is the motivating factor.

The lottery and slot machines use intermittent rewards to increase and maintain interest in gambling. I propose that this is also what is going on with Google AdWords. You read it here first, folks.

From the page: "What is Operant Conditioning?

The basic principal of operant conditioning is simply that the frequency of a behavior will increase if is rewarded, and decrease if it is punished. For instance, a hungry rat in a Skinner box will at first act in a manner that is natural to a hungry rat; e.g., running around the cage, squeaking, trying to escape, etc. If while it is performing these activities, one response - in this case pressing a lever - leads to the reward of securing food, the rat will gradually learn that pressing the lever leads to the reward of food. The behavior will be repeated and thus learned. The behavior that results in the reward becomes especially important to the rat. The same process can be applied to an action that allows the rat to escape from or avoid unpleasant stimuli.

Another principal of operant conditioning is that once a behavior is learned, the frequency of the reward can be reduced. For the behavior to be learned it may be necessary at first to reinforce every occurrence of the behavior. Once learned, the reinforcements can be provided on an intermittent basis, and over time it is possible to reduce the frequency of rewards and still maintain the behavior. For instance, the number of times the lever has to be pressed to achieve a reward can gradually be increased from each time, to every ten times, to every hundred times, and so on, or the lever may need to be pressed repeatedly for a set period of time to achieve a reward. Behavioral psychologists have spent much time experimenting on what effect various schedules of reward have on behavior."

From the page: "This months WebGuild meeting was focused on the Future of Social Networking. There were three panelists - Jai Shen, CTO of Rock You, Sundeep Ahuja, Founder Appfuel and Jonathan Abrams, Founder & CEO of Socialzr (or more notably the founder of Friendster)."