Just going to put this out there. If you ever have someone make a statement, quote, question or whatever; have them review your post before publishing it.
Although you may have your facts right and think you have a bomb post written up, you never know how the party (parties) involved may take it.
A few months ago Jeremy did a post about how there is currently no real micro payment service, or at least one that is efficient. Well it looks like he might get his wish.
A new service I found today called TipJoy may just fit the bill. The service makes it pretty easy to add the ‘Tip’ button to your site that is set for a given amount (default is 10 cents.) Someone browsing the page can simply hit the tip button and send their change to the content owner who can later claim their tips. It also seems like a pretty fair alternative to something like PayPal as well. TipJoy claims that “you will be able to use about 94% of the money you receive.” Id say its pretty accurate taking into account CC processing fees, 3rd party fees, etc. However after a little digging I did find that your money cannot simply be transfered out…. at least not yet. Here is the info straight from TipJoy:
“Because if we allow our users to withdraw money from their account, then we are technically a money transfer service in the eyes of the US Government, which requires registration with all 50 states and with the Federal government (in compliance with the Patriot Act). All of that registration requires a very, very large amount of money which we don’t yet have.”
All in all it seems like a good start. They have some work ahead of them though as well. One of the biggest drawbacks at least to me was not being able to take my money in the form of plane old money. I was also wondering if Shoe himself had anything to do with the service as well or maby a reader took a little hint from shoe to create the service:
“Now people on their blogs or whatever could easily send money or “tip” other people for posts/content/whatever they like.”
Keep on eye on TipJoy, I think they may become a major player in payment processing if they can cross the border of startup to a full fledged money transfer service.
As more and more internet users begin to block out advertisements its clear that ads need to become fresh and interesting again. I think a big trend this year will bill moving away from things like time out ads and peel away type ads will be the new trend.
After fooling around in the last few months with a few affiliate programs and peel away ads, I found that users seem to respond very well to this type of ad. When done creatively, the ads are more interesting than annoying at first and the user rolls over the corner and bam! All of your ad pops out and the webpage they are browsing peels away.
Reaping the benefits of peel away ads is as simple as it is to create and install them. During my trials I used a tool called Peel Away Maker. The tool allows you to specify the click through url, a corner image and an image that would be your ad after the peel away effect. Then you just download the .js file, one line of code in your ad page, then upload the page + js and your done. If you are looking for improved CTRs and a higher income each month, using peel away ads would be a great suggestion.
I was looking around the WordPress dash today and ended up on matt’s blog. I then noticed that the domain he has, is in fact his name: ma.tt
I just then ran all over trying to find some weird domain to end my name with to no avail, I could not at first .tt registration either. It ends up .tt is TLD of Trinidad and Tobago.
You can check out their registration page here.
One of the most underutilized techniques of traffic generation is comment baiting. An amazing source of untapped traffic relies in comments, especially from a site like ohhh lets say Digg.
It’s important to realize that this method is used to simply generate some more traffic, not for backlinks or any kind of link juice. We also want to refrain from spamming. What we want to do is add relevant links in our comments. Keeping in mind that Digg story pages can become quite long with comments its obvious that the closer to the top our link is it will get more traffic.
How do we find a story to comment on?
Well, there is two ways to go about this. The first one is more time consuming but will most likely pay off better in the end. The second method is very easy, very hit or miss, and most likely will not provide as much traffic.
First Method: To find a story, simply watch the upcoming stories or search for related ones. When you find a related one, see if its possible to sneak a link in making it look as relevant as possible. If the story hits front page you will get a very nice amount of trickle down. You might as well post your links on current front page stories as well. It cant hurt, you will get traffic but the amount you receive will decrease as you move down the page.
Second Method: This method is very easy. We will just use Google to find relevant stories on Digg. The only drawback to using this is that your comment will most likely not be towards the top of the page and if it is, the story most likely is not from the front page. Ok so on to Google. Just go to Google and type in your term followed by the site operator for Digg.
Example Search Query: iphone ringtones site:digg.com
Comment bait can be very rewarding when used correctly. I have a site that gets 5,000 hits + per day just off a few comments on stories that made the front page. The biggest thing I want to keep repeating is that you want to remain as relevant as possible, NOT SPAMMY!
Finally, I have been waiting for quite a few of these features. Its nice to see that they have kept in mind that they shipped a $400 + dollar cell phone missing many of the to-be-expected features.
Earlier today at the Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs confirmed all of the rumors floating around in the firmware videos. From what I said he was quoted saying the release would be “today” but I am still getting 1.1.2 as the most recent version in iTunes.
UPDATE - The firmware is now live as of 2:00PM Eastern Time.
Yesterday I was writing a script for my admin panel that would allow me to pull up information on all of my domains, I decided to make a second copy of the script and throw it up on the blog for anyone to use.
Visit The Tool Page Here
Simply fill in the box with your domain and press the button. All kinds of information will then be pulled up on the desired domain.
I will try and update the tool over time to add some more features and what not. Have Fun!
When the iPhone first came out I thought about getting it but really did not see the point for the price. After they dropped I went into the store and the iPhone hype got the best of me. I walked out of the store with my new phone not knowing I had just made a bit of a mistake. While the iPhone does have some sick features and a big, bright touchscreen, but it lacks many basic features.
1. No MMS Support
So you have a phone that can not only interface with a large iTunes library to play music, tv shows, movies, and view photos as well as take them but yet you can not even send an MMS message containing a sound or even photo. My old $100 RAZR could do this but my $430 iPhone does not even have the option to… What gives Apple?
2. No Custom Ringtones
I understand that Apple’s bread and butter is their iTunes music store but come on, why should we have to pay another $1 to have a different ringtone. Thats just plain retarded, are you trying to become Microsoft? What about those of us who make our own ringtones using something like Sony SoundForge?
3. No GPS Support
Sweet I have Google maps on my phone! O wait, it cannot even locate were I am? Whats the point of having the directions feature if you have to first find were you are and then enter a starting point? Kind of defeats the purpose no?
4. No Flash Support
Having Safari on your phone is flat out awesome, Apple did a great job with it no doubt but without Flash support the usage is defiantly hindered.
5. B$ Syncing
This is one of the things that really pissed me off. Not only can you only sync your iPhone to one computer, but you can not freely drag and drop music (or anything for that matter) on to it like you would with an iPod. All you can do is sync playlists.
Honestly speaking I think it is still a very slick phone and its endless fun to fool around with. However if I had known about the above set backs above I would not have made the purchase. In my eyes this is not a finished product, there are phones $200 cheaper that can do the above.
I think Apple has a good amount of work ahead of them in the first few months of 08′ to at least add some of the above functionality or I think I will be getting rid of the iPhone.
Today I will be kicking off a new series I have dubbed ‘Straight From The Guru.’ I will be posting a few articles a week that I found helpful, inspiring, different, new, creative, or whatever it may be that made me read it in the first place. Heres the list for this week.
Designing For Flow
A very well constructed article from A List Apart outlining 4 basic tips to making your website ‘flow’. Well worth the read if you do your own designing as well.
The Four Types of Community
I found this post pretty interesting. It will give you a simple breakdown of the four types as well as a few examples.
Be A Design Cast 45 : Shaun Inman
A great interview (podcast form) with the creator of Mint, Shaun Inman.
The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos
This one is just plain juicy even if you don’t do SMM / SMO.
If you were to go through the history of my blog over the past few weeks you will notice that I have been posting a lot about the Microsoft X Marks The Spot Contest. Without getting into too much detail I will summarize it: You basically go on a scavenger hunt across Microsoft’s websites along with partner sites looking for words with a green x in them based off the clues. Entering these clues gives you a point each (360 total) and a chance at winning a prize.
I saw this as a perfect example to see how viral something like this could really be. After making my 5 minuet PHP script to automatically grab the answers for me I did a quick Google search to see if anyone else was posting answers. The search came back blank. I started posting answers the second night of the contest and people were going nuts over it. By the 5th night my blog was getting 8,000 + hits between 12 midnight and 12:30AM. Yes 8,000 + hits in less than 30 minutes. This may not seem like much but this blog is only 2 and 1/2 months old and this is a lot of traffic (considering it grew and was stable) for such a new site. It got to the point where caching became required and comment moderation was a part time job. Below is a screen shot from Analytics showing traffic from November compared to October.
Links started pouring into the site and the controversy over what I was doing only made it better. Cash wise this was not something I was really planning on but later on (around day 19) I started placing some affiliate stuff around and removing it days after to see what effects it had. I walked away with $1,000 in eBay referrals.
Some closing thoughts for everyone… If you are looking to make money through Social Media, I still believe that the best way to do so is to give the end user something valuable. If I were to have fully exploited this I probably would have made well over $10,000. So: