Colin Klinkert Dot Com

A Short Video Into To This Post Can Be Found: http://viralnetworks.com/view/XPuSc

If you’ve ever read a blog’s comments section, then you’ve probably come across a comment that was submitted for the sole purpose of generating a backlink. The comment usually reads like gibberish, but has a whole bunch of keywords and links peppered within it.

In order to neutralize these sorts of comments, there are all sorts of spam blockers for blogs (with Akismet being one of the most used) and there are NoFollow HTML codes that prevent search engines from giving any credit for these comments.

That being said, commenting on blogs can still be a great way to build buzz and traffic for your site.

Add Value

The idea of blog commenting is to some sort of valuable contribution. For example, if you read a popular blog in your niche and you have an opinion or idea related to a post, then comment on it and feel free to leave a link to your website. When the administrator of the blog sees your comment, the value of what you wrote in advancing the blog’s community far outweighs the small favor of providing a backlink, so they will likely keep the comment live.

If you comment regularly on a certain blog (or series of blogs), then you can begin to develop a relationship with other people in your niche. These people will visit your site and may even link to you or reference you in their posts if the content you provide is worthwhile.

Commenting in this manner, helps out both parties. The blogger builds his community and makes it more likely that other readers will engage in a conversation and keep coming back, and you get a valuable backlink to your site from a blog that focuses on your niche, ensuring targeted traffic.

Another Place Worth Adding Value

Social Networks that have a target audence is a good place to use to add value. It is for this reason I built ViralNetworks! The idea is that you build a reputation among your peers and make those million $ ventures you hear about, as well as getting people to like and trust you. (These are the only reasons people will buy your products, if they know, like and trust you or of course, your product).

Come join me on the online Business Social Network today!

A lot of people don’t realise it, but since May 2008, it has been possible to travel through the galaxy on your computer. That’s when Microsoft Research released the public beta of WorldWide Telescope, a powerful piece of downloadable desktop software that allows people to zoom through the galazy, visiting planets, constellations, even nearby galaxies.

The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 platform that allows your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from ground and space-based telescopes around the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

You can choose from a growing number of tours of the sky guided by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country. You can pause the tour, explore on your own, and then rejoin the tour if you like – just where you left off.

Since its release, almost 2 million people around the world have downloaded this free desktop observatory, called a “phenomenal resource for enthusiasts, students, and teachers,” by PC World.

This week (on March 24) Worldwide Telescope got a boost with the news that NASA and Microsoft are developing technology that will make content including high-resolution scientific images and data from Mars and the moon explorable on WorldWide Telescope,

WorldWide Telescope has been nominated for two awards since its release - an American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) award and the Edison Award. The Edison Awards “symbolize the persistence and excellence personified by Thomas Alva Edison,” recognizing ingenuity, innovation, and creativity in the global economy.

Curtis Wong, and Jonathan Fay, from Microsoft Research drove the creation of Worldwide Telescope, and continue to enrich the telescope’s visuals and add features.

WorldWide Telescope provides a neat segway from inner space to outer space. With Virgin already booking flights for a real space trip, the world is moving ‘up and beyond’.

How long do you think it will be before you and I can take a trip to Space as if we were taking a trip to another country?

Adobe is well known for its photo and video editing software, but its most widely used product is a freebie used by millions of people: Flash technology. It is the technology working behind the scenes on many websites and web servers that allows users to enjoy video online.

As reported in the New York Times, Adobe is to announce that Flash is being extended to the TV screen at the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.

Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO, expects TVs and set top boxes supporting the Flash format to be on the US market later in 2009. The top benefit of Flash technology coming to the TV screen is that users will be able to watch the same videos on the PC, phones and TV screens.

Disney CTO Bud Albers said in a statement that his company is one of the backers of Flash on the TV, stating “Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it. This gets us where we want to go.”

Thanks in part to Flash, Adobe is reporting impressive profit figures. It makes money by selling software that allows media creators to build Flash applications and video. Flash is installed on 98% of all computers and 80% of web videos are viewed using Flash technology. In 2008 Adobe reported income of $871.8 million on revenue of $3.6 billion.

Never one to give ground on any of its related markets, Microsoft is pushing a Flash alternative called Silverlight which it claims has better support for HD 1080p video content. Microsoft states that HD capability is vital in a form format that is to be standard for video on TV. Microsoft’s Brad Becker (a former Adobe executive) said, “I can’t imagine what could be more important on a television than high video quality.”

There’s not been a real competitor to Adobe for ages - Microsoft could just start bridging the gap between the PC and the TV more effectively.

Mobile advertising startup JumpTap is taking on Yahoo and Google by by launching a pay-per-click advertising network called TapMatch.

The new network lets advertisers bid on categories and keywords, and elect to have their contextual ads appear on mobile Web searches. TapMatch also can target users by carrier, location, and other data to serve a more relevant advertisement. Advertisers and marketers will be able to access the ad network through a Web portal where they can upload images, text, or graphic banners for their campaigns.

Paran Johar, chief marketing officer of JumpTap believes “Savvy marketers worldwide are moving their marketing spend to where it matters most — in front of mobile consumers seeking relevant content and immediate gratifications. The mobile advertising market has reached a new phase of maturity where targeting is now essential, and TapMatch uniquely delivers a system that best matches advertisers to their desired audience at their precise moment of intent.”

TapMatch is directly competing with contextual mobile advertising offerings from Yahoo and the mobile version of Google’s AdWords. It is considered to be a lucrative market that will grow as more users access the internet from their phones.

While acknowledging Google’s stake in the space, Johar said that the TapMatch network can offer mobile advertisers more value because it can target devices by carrier, demographic, location, and handset. The company said its beta testers have seen up to three times the click-through rate compared with competing ad networks.

As smartphones become equipped with more desktop-like capabilities, it’s easy to see how people on the move may soon be using them as replacements for laptops.

An advanced facial recognition technology is coming to Facebook, Photo Finder. This application by Face.com uses facial scanning algorithms that would rival those we see on NCIS each week. It will be able to scan through your pics and those public photos of your friends and identify then suggest tags for an untagged people featured in them. Scary stuff!

The speed at which the software can scan through millions of photos appears to be its strength, and while the scan results are not immediate after adding the application, it is possible to view them while the scan is in progress. What’s more Photo Finder saves its results for future use, so that if your friends add the app as well, these photos won’t need to be rescanned.

To begin using Photo Finder, you simply add it to your profile as you would with any other Facebook app. You then click the “Get Started” button and Photo Finder will launch its scan. There’s nothing else you need to do until the scan is complete. You can leave the page to return to other parts of Facebook or even close the web page altogether - Photo Finder will continue to run as you’ve already granted it offline access when you initially added it.

The company has been at pains to address privacy issues and the app will not tag photos within Facebook itself - only within the application, meaning no one can see them unless they too are running the app.

The technology has been in alpha testing for several months among 150 users, colleagues and friends of the creators Gil Hirsch (CEO), Yaniv Taigma (CTO), Eden Shochat, and Moti Shniberg. In that time, around 20 million photos are reported to have been scanned, identifying around 30,000 people.

The company expects to be able to name a ‘launch to the public’ date later this year.

Viralize Your Twitter Account: http://viralfollowers.com/ColinKlinkert/vn/2/

The Power of Partnerships

So you’ve heard about online and affiliate marketing and have learned that they are a great way to make money online, but are you new to the process and don’t know where to begin?

If so it’s time to objectively take stock of your skills and learn what you need to in order to succeed.

At its most basic, online marketing breaks down into two principle parts:  search engine optimization (SEO) and sales copy.  The SEO will drive traffic to your sites, and good sales copy will convince those visitors to buy the product from you.  When you begin to get traffic and sales, you will have the basis of your own ‘list’ of clients. But what if you don’t know a lot about either?

Focus on one or the other to start with and once you have something to bring to the table, you can look for someone to partner with for a campaign.

Sales copy will likely prove to be the valuable skill, and as such is a great place to start.  Look for online resources, books from the local library about copywriting, anything you can get your hands on.  Also, read through the websites that other online marketers have produced.

For every person that wants to be an online marketer and has good sales copy skills, there is another person who is good at SEO but has problems stringing together words into compelling sentences.  Check with forums devoted to online marketing, and you can probably find somebody who is willing to team up with you.

Especially in your early stages of internet marketing, it is better to split all the profit generated than not make any profit at all.  Once you gain some experience, you can strike out on your own, or you may find that you like the partnership and continue with it.

Either way, by combining your skills and somebody else’s at the beginning of your online marketing career, you can start making sales faster.

Where To Find People

For ViralUrl, Frank and I teamed up as we had skills that complimented eachother. ViralUrl has been a big hit and we have plans to take it to the next level as well. I met Frank a while before we partnered through networking. A great new Business Social Network that you can use to meet people to partner with is ViralNetworks! I am on ViralNetworks as well as 18,000 other marketers, so come join us and get networking!

Offer Bonuses When Promoting a Product

One of the best ways to get sales in affiliate marketing is to develop an attractive bonus offer.  If a customer is thinking about buying a product, they will usually search around and try to find the best deal possible.  This is a great opportunity for all affiliate marketers, as you will have people searching for specific keywords and terms, and they will be looking into the deeper pages of search results instead of just the first one or two.  If your bonus is attractive enough, you will get the sale.

So how do you create a good bonus?  There is one main rule:  if your bonus is not good enough to sell as an individual product, then it is not a good bonus.  People look for worthwhile bonus offers, not a group of cheap ebooks that are free, often PLR products, that are often totally unrelated to the product on sale.

Good ideas for bonuses can usually be found in the product itself.  Are you marketing a software program?  If so, then providing instruction about using that program, support on the software, or extra content to be utilized by that program are good routes to try.

For instance, if you’re marketing an SEO Guidebook, a good idea would be to create a few websites that follow the instructions in the book.  Include all relevant files as well as traffic data as a bonus.  That way your customers will see concrete examples of the abstract principles discussed in the book.

Affiliate marketing is a great equalizer.  Everybody starts with the same product and information.  The amount of profit that you generate is completely dependent on how much extra work you are willing to put into it.  Creating a good bonus offer is not an easy process, but once it is complete, you will reap the benefits when the sales start rolling in.

The Sort of Bonuses I Offer

When we promote a product that we think will really help our member base, we offer ‘credits’ to ViralUrl members, or ‘Guaranteed Visitors’. These are two products in our membership site: ViralUrl that we sell every day to members. They convert well and get members good results, so it is a bonus of real value. We sometimes even offer Bonuses to the same value of the product, so it is almost like them getting the product free.

To see offers that we put out with bonuses attached, we have posted a few on our blog, you can see them in this section here: http://viralurls.com/category/bonus-offers/ Simply scroll down to see them all

Colin Klinkert Is on ViralNetworks… You Can See His Profile & Contact Him Here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/2YfSO

Does Twitter Send Traffic?

When I make a blog post, I have a plugin that automatically tweets the fact that I have made a new blog post. The question is, does Twitter send traffic to your blog.

Or…

When you make a Tweet and include a link in it, will your followers click, and then take action? Welcome to the Twitter Traffic Experiment. It is very simple…

Win $25 Simply by Posting a Comment In this Post

To go in the running to win $25, simply make a comment in this thread answering this question:

“What will make you want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email list and read ColinKlinkert.com?” (could be the type of content you want to see, a topic you want to learn etc.)

The way I will get people to see this thread is send 1 tweet now, and 1 again in 12 hours to account for time difference. So two tweets will basically be the source of traffic to this post, the experiment is to see how many people post comments and maybe even retweet my tweet about it…

(Post Your Comments Now & A Winner Will Be Chosen In 24 hours)

Video Intro To This Post Can Be Viewed Here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/CCI0x

Keywords are Important in Marketing

Before you begin an internet marketing campaign, it is crucial to have a specific set of keywords that you will be focusing on.  If you don’t have a list of keywords, your efforts are likely to be ad hoc and aimless, and your campaign could lose focus.  It is far better to have good rankings on a select set of keywords than mediocre rankings on lots of keywords.  Brainstorming is an easy way to come up with keywords.

This is an exercise many of you might remember from grade school, but it works, so give it a try.  Write the name of your product in the middle of a sheet of paper.  Around it, write down the first words and phrases that come to mind, connecting those words to the original with a short line.  Then, for all of those words and phrases, write down what comes to mind when you think about them.

This is called a Cloud Diagram or a Cluster Diagram, and it will give you options you didn’t know you had.  For example, if you were selling web design software then you are already focusing on keywords like “web design” and “how to design a website.”  But you may have missed more focused keywords like “writing HTML” or “coding PHP.”  These are more specific, meaning a smaller audience, but that also means less competition.

If you are conducting a PPC (pay per click) or PPV (pay per view) campaign, using the right keywords and key phrases is imperative.  Choosing the wrong ones can cost you dearly, but by being more focused, you can target your prospects (potential customers) with laser-like precision.

There are also some great tools available to help you select keywords, many are free, like the Google Keyword Tool, which, although designed for Google’s Adwords, can be used by anyone. It is powerful as it shows searches so you know what ones are worth your time and what ones aren’t. Rule of thumb, if it gets less then 1,000 searches a month, scrap it (Unless you are doing PPC and it is a very targeted term that will lead to high conversions.)

You can also use the Google Keyword Tool if you are doing SEO strategies to try and get to the first page of google on those terms. If you find one with a decent amount of searches, search it in google with “keyword” and see how many competing sites there are… of course, the less the better.

Researching and using the right keywords can make or break an internet marketing campaign, particular in the launch phase in affiliate marketing.  So it makes sense to include  keyword research in the early stages of your project planning.

More Tools

As well as the Google tool there are other, more advanced tools available. I use PPCBully to spy on competitiors who are bidding on keywords I have brainstormed to see if they are profitable or not. PPCBully works well, but does take a bit of time to gather the data

Network With Me

If you want to say hi, please feel free to join ViralNetworks, my Business Social Network of choice. Looking forward to hearing from you.

The Intro Video To This Post Can Be Found: http://viralnetworks.com/view/e533m

You’ve probably seen the ads and the listings on job sites:  “Make Great Income From Home!  All You Need Is A Computer!”  Is there truth to these ads?  Yes and no.

If these people are paying for an advertisement, then they are expecting to make some sort of profit on the deal, so they may just be trying to sell you something.  Make sure to research these offers before committing to anything.  But, even though they may be trying to sell you something, these ads are truthful:  you can make money on the internet, and all you need is a computer (and a good work ethic).  The easiest way to start is with a home business using affiliate marketing.

What is affiliate marketing?

Essentially, it is selling someone else’s stuff.  A person will produce a product and register it with an online affiliate management site like Clickbank.  Affiliate marketers (you) will register with that site and promote the product online.  When somebody buys the product through you, they click a special link and part of the sale price goes to the person who developed the product, and part of it goes to you.  Depending on the affiliate offer this can be anything from 30% to 90% to the affiliate.

(Often the reason the product owner offers a huge commission is that the main reason they are selling the product is to build a client list for future marketing purposes.)

The beauty of this system is that once you have developed the marketing strategy to sell this product, it is there for as long as you keep the website active, so you can earn passive income for months after beginning a campaign.  Even after you’ve forgotten about it entirely and have already done three or four other projects, your bank account will keep growing.

Affiliate marketing requires you to be able to write good sales copy (or pay somebody else to do it), and drive web traffic to a website that features that sales copy (or pay somebody else to do it).  Depending on the profit margin, you may be able to subcontract some elements, but it is a good idea to learn every facet in the beginning.  This maximizes your profit and gives you a good grounding on all aspects of affiiliate marketing.

If you don’t have your own product to sell (yet!!), then affiiliate marketing is a great way to start making money online.

Good Affiliate Programs:

Good affiliate programs are programs that sell themselves because the service offered is of high quality, the sales pages have been split tested and proven to convert and there is a lot of social proof (testimonials from other happy customers)

My Suggestion:

ViralUrl is the program I would suggest, as we have thousands of positive feedbacks and our offers are proven to convert at well over 5% from free to paid & we also often pay you just for getting free signups. I know that it is my program so you will be thinking, “of course you will suggest your stuff” and whilst I don’t claim that statement to be wrong, ViralUrl meets all the criteria of a winning affiliate program and our top promoters have earned over $20,000 in affiliate commissions (And these commissions are recurring, either monthly or yearly). If you are not a member of ViralUrl yet, it is worth a look