Social Media

A couple of weeks ago I was alerted to the unveiling of Internet marketing guru Matt Callen’s new “Blogger Apps” at http://www.bloggerapps.com.  It promised, among other things:

Turn Your Sites Into Deadly Effective Cash Machines While Working an Hour Per Day or Less, and Explode Your Adsense and Affiliate Income Each Month From Increased,
FREE Traffic”

As I am sometimes know to do, I took advantage of the “presale” offer.  After all, it promised to help me automate my blog, right?

So I plunk down the $29 (at least it wasn’t $129) and log in.  And to my surprise this is what I found:

2 pages.  One, a place to “schedule” posts and the other a social bookmarking/posting page.

What? Was I seeing this right?

Wordpress has automated posting BUILT IN, how is this helpful, or even needed?  And with socialposter, I can do the exact same thing as his other tool.

Yep, I was taken.  And this time, since it wasn’t through ClickBank, I have no reasonable way to ask for a refund.

So, if you are considering Matt Callen’s Blogger Apps, seriously rethink you decision.   Wordpress has the functionality built in, and socialposter.com is free.

And this, my friends is the last straw, and I am finally unsubscribing from Matt Callen’s news feed.

Technorati Tags: Matt Callen, Blogger Apps, wordpress, scams, socialposter.com

You might expect blog posts written with the wordpress app for the iPhone to be relatively short and sweet, however for me, my iPhone posts are oftentimes the most verbose of my postings.

Why is this?

For one, if I even consider blogging on the iPhone, I generally have a lot of time on my hands. It’s not that the app or process is difficult, it’s just that if I am out and about and have time to blog, it’s for a reason.   I must be stuck someplace like an airport or conference I’m not interested in for the idea to blog on the iPhone even to cross my mind.

But blogging from the iPhone does have a down side for me. I like to publish a post after writing, and many times I have written a fairly impressive post and then reviewed it on the iPhone screen, only to later find numerous spelling errors that I overlooked when tapping it out on the wordpress iPhone app.

If you have you wordpress blog automatically send out a tweet in Twitter , you can have hundreds if not thousands of people read your blog entry before you find all of your spelling errors. And a blog with a lot of errors is not only hard to read, it is also unprofessional.

So after a few months of occassional blogging on the iPhone, I am forced to think back to high school paper writing, and the teacher who said write it out, let it set, then edit and revise. The best process for me when using the iPhone for blogging is writing the post, saving it as a draft and then reviewing and publishing later.

In fact that is what I did with this post!

Any comments from other bloggers? Do you use remote posting for short posts or have you written a longer post on your iPhone or even via email?  Do you publish right away, or does it depend merely on the time-sensitive nature of the post?

Detailed here on this blog over the past many years is an overwhelming sense of frustration trying to stake out my claim to “riches” on the world wide web.

Where many of my colleagues here in Des Moines are focused on providing services and businesses, I remain fixated and determined to create a stream of income from google adsense and affiliate programs.

I have spent countless dollars on $97 and up info products as well as adsense “engines” that promise to do most of the work for you… Nothing worked for me.

If there was one piece of advice I can give to other prospective affiliate marketers and adsense publishers out there it is this- do not buy and of the ebooks from clickbank! Why? Three reasons.

First, most of them are severely outdated and were written two or three years ago. Policies and tactics change, but ebooks generally do not.

Second, if you are going to purchase things from clickbank, get your own affiliate ID. You can earn back sometimes 75% of what you paid for the ebook. Of course you will need 5 separate credit cards buying through your ID before you can get paid.

Finally, I will reveal the secret almost almost all if the “make money online” sites hide inside their final chapters. In fact some ebooks exist only about the secret! So here it is: you plunk down $97 for the latest fast-cash ebook on clickbank, get through the fluff about setting up a website and domain name, and then you read the golden advice… The surefire way to make money on the internet is…

Write you own $97 ebook you can con others to buy on clickbank.

Sucker.

That’s it- that’s the big secret? In most cases, yep. Now there are some legit ebooks out there such as Joel Comm’s adsense secrets four (don’t buy The Adsense Code, his real book since he explained in a video it was his ebook’s third revision repackaged.)

So what do you do if you aren’t a salesman or seine wanting to dupe people into buying you latest info product?

That’s what I am still trying to figure out.

It’s a tough distinction to understand for many in the field, so I can imagine how it seems to those just entering the world of internet marketing and social marketing.   I have been involved in one heavily over the past several years, and interested in being involved in the other.   So what is the difference between internet marketing and social marketing?

continue

November 19 marked the date of the official first Ames tweetup, bringing together members of the Twitter community from Ames and also supportive members from Des Moines, Ankeny and other nearby communities.

The event was hosted by Olde Main Brewery on Main Street, beginning pretty much on the button at 6pm.

Upon arrival, guests were asked to fill out a name badge (unless they had a #dmtweetup badge) as well as drop a business card into a beer pitcher for a drawing for a free 6 pack.

Over the course of the few hours people drifted in and out, little groups of conversation formed and reformed and new acquaintances were made.

The turnout was ok for a first tweetup – not sure if there was an actual count or not. For the next one I highly recommend using upcoming.org as it not only will give an approximation of attendance, but it also allows people to “check out” people attending so you can easily follow them later.

The night was fun, and Olde Main even had sample pitchers of their homemade brew to try. I had to duck out early when I thought I left by laptop in a rental car.

Good start for future tweetups in the Ames area!

(posted via iPhone)

It’s hard to keep optimistic these days with talk of recession, tumbling stock markets, and overall uncertainty as we inch closer and closer to the election in November.  The uneasiness has left many companies fearing a repeat of the dot-com bust of 2000-2001.  But is there really need to worry?

As consumer spending slows down, people have a tendancy to cut out things they don’t need.   It sounds almost too simple.   The first to go are usually magazine subscriptions, whatever-of-the-month clubs, and giant purchases such as houses, cars and high-ticket items.

Next  comes the whole array of consumer goods.  TVs, computers, PDA’s,  until we finally get to extra-curricular activities.  Sporting games, tae kwon do, swimming lessons, movies (in theater), concerts, live theater – basically outside entertainment.

So where does that leave online entertainment?

Web Sites Using Google Adsense Will Thrive

The push is going to be to “save money and stay home” which means more than ever people will be looking online for their entertainment, information and socialization.  Facebook, MySpace and Youtube had better be prepared in terms of bandwidth and power that will hit exponentially.

Those who have been building content on the web for others to view free, while adding ad units such as Google Adsense will continue to prosper, even earning more money than before because of the new eyeballs hungry for content.   Remember the good old days where everybody had a fan site for their favorite actor, actress or show?   Those who kept up those sites will once again see their traffic levels increase.

If you have not monetized your hobby site, or even your business site, with Google Ads, do it now.

Your ability to fill the need for entertainment on the Internet is a precious and valuable resource that will enable you to ride out the slow economic times we are faced with.   There is a great opportunity awaiting those who are active in the space, some will take advantage of it.

Will you?

Technorati Tags: recession, online, entreprenuers, google adsense

Despite having a long history of participating in affiliate programs, Google Adsense, and other ways of making some money online, last year I decided to participate in a program known as the Thirty Day Challenge.

I briefly discussed the challenge at this month’s Central Iowa Blgogers meeting on August 1st.  I told them about the premise of the idea, and some of the highlights (and lowlights) of last year, including the massive deletion of Tumblr accounts for what I still consider no good reason.

The challenge has been having what they call “Pre-season” for about a month or two, and is only into its third day of actual content.  So if you are interested in using the Internet to make your first $10, you should definitely check out the pre-season of the Thirty Day Challenge, as well as the challenge itself.   I learned a lot about some new meda tools last year, and this year they are using the flock web browser, which I have to admit I have not used before.

To find out more about the Thirty Day Challenge, Just visit www.thirtydaychallenge.com.

For me, I need to catch up on pre-season, and I’ll see you there shortly.   If you join the challenge, let me know.   Part of the challenge last year was creating some “groups” to help each other out, and I’d love to form some groups based on my actual network here.

Check it out!

Almost 2 years ago I remember reading Wil Wheaton’s blog where he lost all or most of his purchased iTunes music, and I remember feeling jealous when a rep from apple who read his blog, called him to make everything right.

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2006/09/apple_gave_me_b.html

Fast forward to the Twitter age.

DIGSBY

I have used several IM clients over the years, and had pretty much settled on Trillian to be my IM program of choice, since it combined the services of AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN. A coworker then told me about Digsby, which also combined Facebook, Myspace, Gmail and Twitter. I installed the application and had no issues whatsoever.

What I was having problems with was a notification showing up in Digsby that I had a @reply, but couldn’t see them on my twitter timeline (I use the actual twitter.com interface). I almost immediately received a direct message from Digsby offering to help troubleshoot the problem.

Whoa.

Turns out it wasn’t Digsby at all, but my settings on Twitter to “show all @replies on my timeline”

But, I was still very impressed with Digsby monitoring the twitterverse for their name being mentioned, and jumping right on questions that were presented – but probably not even directed towards them.

Bright Kite

I don’t have a phone that supports Bright Kite, so I enter in my location manually, thus somewhat defeating the purpose I suppose. In today’s world of so many different social applications being launched, I oftentimes use a generic password for sites Im not sure I will use a lot.

So, when I really WANTED to use Bright Kite recently, I had forgotten which password I actually used. I searched and searched, but to my surprise there was no “forgot password” link to be found. I immediately twittered my frustration (and almost at the exact same time remembered my password anyway). Within 2 minutes there was a @reply to me saying they were working on it, and within 20 minutes, I got another reply saying there was now a forgot password link on the site.

Yikes.

Yet again, another company that “gets it.”

So bravo to these companies and others using twitter to enhance not only their core product, but also customer service. I’m sure there are many other companies out there doing the same thing. But for once (or twice) – you guys made me feel like a celebrity.

Technorati Tags: bright kite, digsby, twitter, wil wheaton

I received an email from a family I know asking me to view and vote for their daughter’s video podcast. The contest is being run by The World’s Forum for Aerospace Leadership in collaboration with NASA, so obviously I was interested.   I’m not quite sure why these things are being called podcasts, and not merely short videos, but the work these kids have been doing is amazing.

 Check out the entries here.

Oh yeah, and if you feel up to it, cast a vote for Kristina’s entry, “Hello From the Children of Planet Earth.”

Rutter’s Ramblings is 2 years old today.

I really need to do a new show….

New Phone number – 206-888-2493, the other one was disabled for lack of use.  Call and wish me a happy birthday!