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Adult marketing on Google Friend Connect

It appears Google’s Friend Connect/Blog follower feature allows users to fly topless pictures.  Add this to a mix of high volume “social”-enabled blogs and hilarity (and traffic) ensues.

Here’s an example from a fairly popular blog:

The racy profile pic will appear first under the Google Friend Connect/Follower area.  Click Here.

When you click the profile, you get link outs outside of the Google network.  Click Here.

Some issues that come to mind:
Untargeted traffic usually don’t convert well.  However, assuming the right mix of blogs are tagged, a heavy volume would offset the lack of targeting.
Age-sensitivity issues for Google.  This widget could very well appear on blogs visited by minors.  That won’t be a good thing for big G.  Maybe an age-filtering system for profile pics?
Scope and reach.  Just how do profile marketers know which blogs to visit so their profile pic appears?  There’s quite a lot of blog metric tools out there, along with platform information to address this issue.
The deal killer: heavy traffic blogs have a lot of user “churn”.  Sure, your click magnet profile pic might appear once but it is quickly flushed as more users visit the blog.

Other thoughts:  A better approach would probably involve posting only bikini (PG-13 type) shots instead of topless pics.  Probably would result in less banning :)   This would probably work for both mainstream and adult themed sites although the adult sites would probably convert better–due to thematic proximity between picture and target site.

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pompano 8 February 2010 social network marketing , 1 Comment

Sneaky way to get traffic via Twitter

We’ve been noticing that many heavy traffic news and other mass media sites have been posting tweets to them via @.  I guess the rationale for this is to get a “pulse” of what readers feel about late breaking news, current trends, and genuine feedback.  Interestingly, more and more of these types of setup are being hit hard by irrelevant, obviously commercial tweets.

Looks like a few of these newspaper tweet sites are unmanaged.  Bad move.  You don’t want your newspaper readers saying “Cool, XXXX newspaper is now selling Tramadol online” LOLz.

Photo Credits:  Dr Stephen Dann

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pompano 7 February 2010 social network marketing , No Comments

Facebook Traffic Service testing results

facebookWebmasterlabor.Com is testing out a new service to add to its portfolio of traffic generation services.  As a subsidiary, we were tasked with testing out this service.  Here are the results:

Facebook Traffic Service Analysis

Methodology:  Create a facebook friend with thousands of friends.  Send a link to friends to get traffic.  This particular facebook page has a wide range of fans.  Mostly females.  Mostly over 20 years of age.

Site used for testing:  We have a lightly promoted blog that is part of our site incubation program.  It is an academics blog that targets individuals who want to go back to school.  It is a blog that is in the very early stages of development and hasn’t been integrated to webmasterlabor’s traffic building processes.  In other words, it’s the perfect candidate for a traffic test.

These are our findings:

Speed of delivery: Almost instant.  Once the link was sent out , the blog started getting traffic.

Traffic Targeting: There is no targeting on the supply end–the fanbase for the page is what it is.  Any targeting must be done on the demand side.  We didn’t use a new theme for the target blog nor did we pick out a deep link that is targeted to the readers.  This lack of targeting on our end had an impact on the results.

Traffic Improvement: There was a dramatic improvement from the day before.  We used very very specific ad text so the traffic was pretty much “self-filtered”.

Traffic Quality: Due to the lack of targeting, the bounce rate was very high. Average stay was under 10 seconds.  Most of the traffic was from the UK.  Regardless, the blog saw a steep rise in daily income.

Income Improvement: The blog went from less than 20 cents per day to over $1 per day. Fivefold increase.  The blog was very lightly promoted before.  Almost no linkbuilding.

Conclusion: Tweak your site first.  Make sure it matches the demographics and geography of the traffic source.  Both content and language should appeal to the fanbase.   Text should be highly specific so your traffic is self-filtering.  One possible improvement would be to offer a service that does CUSTOM FANBASE recruitment.

For further inquiries regarding this service, contact Webmasterlabor.Com here

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High Revenue Admin 7 June 2009 social network marketing , No Comments

Twitter updates @ functionality

Twitter has updated its @ setting so that people who follow an account will no longer see that account’s @ replies.  However, people can still see account names mentioned with @ as long as it’s not a direct reply.  Here’s an example:

Replies @account won’t show:  If an account you’re following replies to @account, the message to @account won’t show in your feed.

Mentions of @account will show:  If an account you’re following posts an update that mentions @account, you’ll see that in your feed

Twitter’s system couldn’t handle the load so they were technically pushed to this solution.

Personally, I think this is a good solution.  It still offers serendipity, minimizes @ noise, and prevents calculated @ sniping.  Hopefully, this update won’t ignite (yet again) moans that “Twitter is Worthless“.  Twitter isn’t worthless… how can it be?  It makes me money :)

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High Revenue Admin 13 May 2009 social network marketing 2 Comments

Does it ever make sense to comment on NO FOLLOW blogs?

no follow comment valueMany webmasters consider NO FOLLOW a curse.  They think that it unnecessarily restricts their linkbuilding efforts.  Indeed, many webmasters think that Wordpress’ default NOFOLLOW tag on comments will not yield the intended result–cut down on comment spam.  Regardless, the reality is that the vast majority of Wordpress-based blogs are NO FOLLOW despite the laudable efforts of some webmasters to enable their blogs to follow comments.  Which brings up the question–does it ever make sense to comment on NO FOLLOW blogs?

Commenting for backlink volume versue commenting  for authority/conversation

There are two main reasons for commenting on blogs.  The most common reason is that people comment for backlinks.  The comment “name” is hyperlinked to a url.  Accordingly, many commenters use their keywords as names.  Some sites allow this, other blogs (such as ours) request that you put your real name and a – or | followed by your keyword.  This naming convention makes the comments seem less spamariffic. :)   If you’re just commenting for backlink volume, as mentioned in our earlier critique of traffic building techniques, commenting on NO FOLLOW blogs will be a waste of time.  Commenting for backlink volume involves posting once or twice on as many related do follow blogs you can find.  Volume and efficiency are the keys to this linkbuilding method.

The other reason people comment on blogs is to build a long-term relationship with the blog they are commenting on.  This creates familiarity and rapport between the blog publisher and the commenter.  This relationship is also augmented by the commenter posting longer and more detailed critiques/impressions of the blog and posting it on his/her own blog.  Where does this lead to?  Building a relationship with a high PR or high traffic/high value blog leads to credibility/legitimacy with that blog’s publisher.  This could lead to them posting about your site or sending you shoutouts.  These posts aren’t NO FOLLOWED and yield some nice link juice.  Even if the target blog has little backlink value (in the case of John Chow’s site due to his issues with Google), the direct traffic he can bring your way based on a recommendation or shoutout has tremendous value.  Moreover, it establishes credibility with the blog’s other readers which you can leverage in linkexchange solicitations with their sites.

The downside to blogging for conversations/authority is that it takes time and the payoff–getting an ‘in post’ mention is not guaranteed.  It also takes some valuable time from your other daily linkbuilding tasks.  Here’s some tips that might make your authority commenting more efficient:

  • Choose no follow blogs that either have high traffic, high page rank, or both
  • Choose blogs that you can participate in easily and add high value comments to
  • Choose blogs where the owner has made shoutouts or linkouts to commenters in the past.
  • Choose blogs that are highly ‘personality-driven’ and the blog owner seems highly accessible
  • Be prepared to run a marathon and not a sprint
  • Always “recycle” your comments by using them as “seeds” for longer and more detailed entries on your own blog

Commenting for authority is not a slam dunk but the payoffs can be very nice.  Keep on keeping on!  The surest way to lose in any venture is to give up.

Photo credits: Lumaxart

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High Revenue Admin 7 May 2009 linkbuilding techniques, social network marketing , , No Comments

Is Twitter Worthless?

is twitter worthlessTwitter is growing currently at the phenomenal rate of almost 1000%.   However, there is a disturbing twin figure to that 1000% growth rate:  a dismal retention of only 30%.  By contrast, Facebook retains around 70% of its users, a similar figure to some other social networking sites.  This disconnect between rapid adoption rates and bad retention rates invites the question: Is Twitter Worthless as a direct marketing tool?

I see Twitter’s low retention rates impacting non-targeted tweet campaigns primarily. For those who build twitter profiles that zero in on particular demographics or use twitter to maintain an ongoing conversation with people looking for specific content, retention is not a problem. I run quite a few mainstream blog accounts on twitter (my main twitter account http://twitter.com/websitewriters is not one of my blog accounts) and let me tell you–less is more. Sounds very Zen, right? I focus on a lower number of users for my own blogs’ twitter pages but feed them the info they need. In terms of monetization success, I run Adsense on these blogs and we’re looking at many $3 clicks, sometimes higher. Per click. Targeting is key. Also, since the person is following you and listening to you, as long as you satisfy their content preferences and you do it strategically (sending out updates that have high relevance but also high PPC value), your effort is rewarded.

Variation in Twitter marketing results

Other marketers’ results will vary of course. Variation results from niche (is your target market looking for info or are they impulse buyers?), how you find and target people to follow/recruit, how active you are in sending @ and if the @ messages also have relevance to people looking at your tweet feed or the tweet feed of the people responding to your @ I can’t say it’s a consistent cash cow right now but it is a source of income that can be a nice component in your overall multi-traffic/multi-revenue stream overall strategy.

Thanks for the Twitter image: IconTexto Webdev Social Bookmark

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High Revenue Admin 29 April 2009 social network marketing , 7 Comments