Internet Marketing GuideMo' Money – Make $$$ Online

Editor’s note: The following data is an excerpt from Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data membership service covering Facebook’s platform and advertising ecosystem.

Nevermind China’s country-wide block on Facebook; the Chinese language is still the ninth-largest language on Facebook, thanks to Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Chinese is growing at a steady pace, and it’s beginning to draw the attention of some of Facebook’s biggest players.

Zynga is a case in point. Two weeks ago, the top social gaming company published a Chinese-language version of Zynga Poker, one of its flagship apps.

But rather than trying to reach China with the new game, where Zynga Beijing helped localize the app, the company settled for a release to Facebook’s 11.5 million Chinese-language users.

There were likely several motivations behind Zynga’s Facebook launch. The first is that China is not an easy market to push into, for a foreign company. The Chinese government requires that outside entrants be partially owned by a Chinese company — a hurdle that Zynga may not want to cross until it’s sure the project is worthwhile.

Luckily, Facebook can provide a great litmus test for entering the mainland. Hong Kong is an administrative region of China, while independent Taiwan is still culturally close (and often claimed by China as a province).

On Facebook, Zynga Poker will be competing for this cuturally Chinese audience, with actual Chinese game developers like Elex and Boyaa, which has its own successful poker game. The results should tell it how it might do in China.

There are other reasons to enter Facebook’s Chinese-language market beyond just testing for China itself, though.

The second is that the Chinese-language user group will likely contain more social game players, proportionately, than a similarly-sized group of English or Spanish speakers. Among the 11.5 million Chinese-language users, a large majority are visiting Facebook just to play games, judging both from what we’ve heard and seen in user behavior.

Additionally, these are users who not only play games, but spend freely on virtual goods within their games experience (as a side note, the virtual goods industry is estimated to surpass $5 billion this year). So, the East Asian user base is not only growing but also valuable. Here’s a rough estimate of how the Chinese-language market could continue to grow into next year:

The total population of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan is around 35 million users, so there will obviously be some upper boundaries to growth; however, localizing existing games looks like a winning proposition from here.

As for the users themselves, our look at the performance of three apps in Taiwan earlier this month shows that there are more differences.

For instance, the average age of users playing the largest three games is around 27. In the United States or another Western country, the average age for a give group of apps would likely be a decade higher.

These youthful users, who have a strong propensity to put their disposable income into online activities, may also be cheaper to acquire than their counterparts in Western markets.

Here’s a look at cost-per-click ad rates across the three big Chinese-language markets:

For developers that do want to move their apps over, a Beijing office isn’t necessarily vital; some publishers in the region are offering localization services to Western developers, including Hong Kong-based 6waves, which we interviewed on the subject in July.

The full Facebook Global Language Report is available through a membership to Inside Facebook Gold, which also includes monthly data on total global audience growth and demographics. To learn more or join, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.

Today Facebook won a patent filed in 2004 for a search engine which ranks results or online ads based on the frequency of clicks by those connected to a user on a social network. Results would be accompanied by an image or text denoting how many people connected to the user clicked that link, similar to Facebook’s Like button/counter. The patent could, in theory, be used to create a search engine based on the clicks of one’s friends and friends of friends, or stifle a similar product of Google’s forthcoming social network Google Me.

The patent, filed for Facebook, Inc. on October 18th, 2004 lists Christopher Lunt, Nicholas Galbreath, and Jeffrey Winner as inventors.

It says a connection can be between “registered users who are related within two or more degrees of separation to the registered user within the online social network”. This leaves the degrees of separation up to Facebook, meaning results could be based on clicks by your friends, friends of friends, or every registered Facebook user. Searching for humorous content with results ranked by what your friends clicked could produce a more valuable experience than rankings based on clicks from across the web.

However, the patent doesn’t specify if results can be based on shared user characteristics, or connections to non-users, such as Pages. Facebook might not be able to use this patent to create a ranking system based on clicks of those within your network, country, or age group; or based on clicks by those who share a connection to an interest Page. If you were searching for political news, the power to see results ranked by clicks of those connected to the same political party could be useful, but it is not covered by this patent.

Facebook might not put the patent into use on its own products, though, as the site makes money from allowing Microsoft’s Bing to power its internal search. Instead, they might use the patent defensively. Social search could be a big part of Google Me’s differentiation from Facebook, but this patent could — again, in theory — restrict such features. Facebook owns or has applied for dozens of patents at this point, but it has not gone on the offense against rivals to date.

My friend dropped off a package for me just now. I open it up, and to my surprise, it is a gift from Mr. Shawn Collins. Very unexpected. I shall reciprocate this gift with some links to Shawn Collins properties in the blog roll. Thanks mang!

As much as I despise Frank Luntz’s face – I hear good things about this book. It should be a good read.

Is it gay to get excited about books?

Facebook Page tab applications marketplace Appbistro today launched its Verified Developer Program, a distinction it awards to developers offering high quality, reliable apps and strong customer support.

Chosen developer will gain the advantage of having their apps display Appbistro’s Verified Developer badge and appear at the top of search results and app category indexes on the Appbistro marketplace.

The program acts as a third-party version of Facebook’s Preferred Developer Consultant Program, except that it is specifically for Page tab app developers and Appbistro earns a 30% affiliate fee on the sale of any app in its marketplace, verified or otherwise.

Currently upon submission to Appbistro, Page tab apps are given a one to five-star rating based on virality, content management, administrative experience, user experience, and scalability. The Verified Developer distinction is awarded independently of this rating. The launch partners, who will be the first to display the Verified Developer award, are Facebook e-commerce and storefront provider Payvment, job posting tab maker Work For Us, and welcome tab builder Pagemodo. They were chosen for having valuable apps, good customer support, and a high monthly active user count.

Director of Business Development Rhett Stonelake says Appbistro is now accepting inquiries regarding inclusion in the program, but that developers new to the marketplace will undergo a 30 to 40 day trial period to vet their long term customer support before being considered.

When a developer is admitted, all of their apps will receive the distinction and the associated advantages. A self-written blurb about the developer is also added to their app profiles. There is no specific cap on how many developers can be admitted, and developers will be warned if the quality or support of their apps drops such that they are in danger of being expelled.

Appbistro says they’re aiming to solve the Page tab app discoverability problem. Since some apps with high utility don’t have inherent virality, it can be hard for admins to find them, especially since Facebook removed links to the Application Directory. The Verified Developer Program does not discriminate based on size, making it accessible to small companies or even app hobbyists as long as they meet the requirements. While the launch of the program may also be designed to bring press and traffic to AppBistro, it does provide a distribution channel for any Page tab app developer which is committed to quality.

Today Palm released the latest version of its Facebook mobile app, Facebook for Palm webOS 1.3. The official release includes many features and improvements tested on its Facebook for Palm webOS beta clients, including landscape mode, revised photo tagging, selectable news feeds, and in-feed comments. Reviews of the app complement its speed but complain about the lack of Facebook Chat and Places.

Unlike some other Facebook mobile apps which only distribute official releases, Palm lets users download beta versions of Facebook for Palm webOS between official updates. This allows the company to experiment and gather feedback on new functionalities, ensuring official releases are stable and full of improvements. For instance, the ability to toggle on or off the display of comments in the news feed was tested in Facebook for Palm webOS Beta 1.2.30 before being included in today’s release.

Specific improvements to the release include:

1. Landscape viewing mode when the phone is tilted to the side
2. Photo tagging using suggested match once you start typing a name
3. Selectable news feeds including status updates, photos, links, networks, and friend lists
4. Fan page navigation
5. Simultaneous clearing of multiple notifications

Reviews of Facebook for Palm webOS 1.3 have generally been favorable, commending the speed and stability of the features now included. Criticism has focused on the lack of certain features long existing or recently added to other Facebook mobile apps. Like those with Blackberry and Android phones, Palm users still don’t have the Places functionality included on the iPhone. Palm’s Facebook Page and forums also included requests for Chat, the ability accept friend requests, and content deletion capabilities.

Palm is listening, though. Justin Reid, one of the application’s developers, has been personally responding to reviews of the app, pointing customers with issues towards support solutions. With this level of attention and the beta release system, we expect that Facebook for Palm webOS will continue to improve.

Retailer Urban Outfitters has made the Facebook Like button central to the way the company is marketing its products online. Visitors to the Urban Outfitters web site are now greeting by a large thumbs up asking them to “See our most Liked items.”

The company had installed the Like button by its products on the company web site and this new feature is essentially a grouping of the most Liked items into one place. These items — which include men’s and women’s clothing, as well as home items — are then grouped into a special section promoted on their web site.

So far more than 313,000 Like Urban Outfitters on Facebook, where the company does promote its company web site. Exclusive offers for Facebook fans are also offered and the company shares new merchandise with photos often with fans as well.

As previously mentioned, the fact that Urban Outfitters is using Facebook’s marketing tools to market its own products is inventive. It assumes that people visiting the company web site will still consider Facebook Likes as social recommendations when they’re shopping online. So the Like button is being used as a way to market products in its own right, instead of simply spreading the word about them.

For more about innovative uses of Facebook’s social plugins check out our premium service, Inside Facebook Gold.

Facebook launched an official company-run Page for universities and university-related entities Monday. The Page currently includes some shopping bargains relevant to school and also tips for how different campus organizations can use Facebook, like the recommendation that student newspapers add the Like button to their web sites.

The Universities Page is similar to other company-run reference Pages Facebook has created this year, including: Comedy Page, Congress Page, U.S. Politics Page and a Media Page. So far the Universities Page is nearing 3,000 Likes.

As part of the Page’s launch Facebook teamed up with several retailers to offer back-to-school specials on school supplies. Context Optional designed the Deals tab which includes offers such as Eddie Bauer discounts on clothing and backpacks and Newegg.com’s laptop deals.

Other info on the Page includes several separate tabs meant to help college organizations take full advantage of Facebook’s platform by providing a tip sheet. The Press tab offers tips for college newspapers, a Community tab for dorms or clubs, a Student Government Tab and a Sports tab with different suggestions on how to use Facebook for promotion. Some of the tips include cross-promoting content, spreading awareness, creating discussions, selling merchandise and promoting events.

It’s interesting to see Facebook take on the university scene, as several other companies have been trying to fill that void for some time. We’ve written about Inigral’s attempt to build a closed version of Facebook and CampusBuddy’s application adding onto Facebook with its most recent partnership with Cramster. Both companies have been attempting to help universities shine on Facebook, as currently higher education is one of the sectors that hasn’t had smashing success on the Facebook platform — aside from Facebook’s roots as a massive success with college students, of course.

Using data gathered from our PageData tool, which counts the number of Likes added to a Page each day, we can determine that music was very popular on Facebook during the past week.

More than half of the list, 11 to be exact, were music Pages, then there were some TV shows, a few brands, the Modern Warfare 2 video game Page, Portuguese football (soccer) star Cristiano Ronaldo and Megan Fox. It took between 732,900 down to 197,700 new fans in order to make the list.

Top Gainers This Week

Name Fans Gain Gain, % 1. Modern Warfare 2 1,998,909 +732,893 +57.89 2. Eminem 12,019,779 +413,705 +3.56 3. Justin Bieber 10,445,045 +331,546 +3.28 4. Lady Gaga 16,720,364 +328,546 +2.00 5. Facebook 17,414,796 +322,758 +1.89 6. Shakira 7,627,713 +276,250 +3.76 7. YouTube 12,074,847 +269,302 +2.28 8. South Park 11,723,393 +268,929 +2.35 9. Family Guy 16,228,502 +260,178 +1.63 10. The Simpsons 6,286,048 +256,176 +4.25 11. Linkin Park 11,318,818 +254,809 +2.30 12. Katy Perry 7,508,500 +253,647 +3.50 13. Lil Wayne 10,731,968 +253,510 +2.42 14. Cristiano Ronaldo 10,864,833 +242,894 +2.29 15. David Guetta 7,838,282 +238,000 +3.13 16. Rihanna 8,073,872 +232,794 +2.97 17. Megan Fox 12,546,602 +209,096 +1.69 18. Taylor Swift 9,545,600 +204,113 +2.19 19. Bob Marley 9,617,698 +201,870 +2.14 20. Kohl’s 2,438,265 +197,687 +8.82

As previously mentioned, Modern Warfare 2 was at the top of the list this week, but most of its 732,900 Likes were added in two huge jumps last Tuesday and Wednesday in spurts of 209,300 and 515,200, respectively. The Page hasn’t had activity since July and has just under 2 million total Likes.

Eminem kicked off the music portion of the list, coming in second place, adding 413,700 Likes during the past week, mostly probably because his single “Love the Way You Lie” is still popular and it was announced he’d be performing at the MTV Video Music Awards. His Page has a total of 12 million Likes now. Justin Bieber came in third, adding 331,500 Likes to grow his Page to 10.4 million; the singer has been touring and promoting his music in various ways.

Facebook queen Lady Gaga added 328,500 fans to her 16.7 million cache this week in fourth place. She’s been hawking merchandise on her Page, updating with personal information and photos. Another songstress, Shakira, was in sixth place, adding 276,250 Likes to grow the Page to 7.6 million Likes; she posted some tour dates and performance videos. At number 11 was Linkin Park, which has a really interesting integration highlighting both the audio and music video of the first single off their soon-to-be-released album that seeks social interaction. The band added 254,800 Likes and has grown to 11.3 million.

Katy Perry took twelfth place this week; she’s been promoting her new album/singles and has been appearing on television shows performing. She added 253,700 Likes to her 7.5 million base this week. Lil Wayne followed at 13, adding 253,500 Likes to grow his Page to 10.7 million. Although he’s still in prison he gained media attention for writing a letter to Sports Illustrated about his tennis predictions this week and promoted his music to his Wall this week.

DJ David Guetta was on the list at number 15, adding 238,000 Likes to his 7.8 million-strong Page; he’s been promoting his merchandise and articles about himself. At 16 was Rihanna, who added 232,800 Likes to her Page to pass 8 million, even though there wasn’t any activity on the Page since last week. She’s touring. Taylor Swift came in at 18, adding 204,100 Likes to get to 9.5 million; she’s been on TV promoting her new single and accompanying music video. Then there was Bob Marley’s Page, which is growing steadily adding 201,900 Likes to grow to 9.6 million this week. Because Marley is dead, most of the content is about his children (who are also musicians) or content generated by fans; his Page seems to be going the Michael Jackson route, where it grows due to the singer’s extreme popularity, rather than activity on Facebook.

In non-music related news, Facebook’s Page came in fifth place, adding 322,800 Likes to reach 17.4 million. YouTube was at number 7, adding 269,300 Likes to pass 12 million. Then Kohl’s department store came in 20, adding 197,700 Likes to grow to 2.4 million; the company is giving away half a million dollars to schools in a Facebook-promoted contest.

Television shows on the list this week included “South Park” at number 8, which added 269,000 Likes to reach 11.7 million. “Family Guy” followed in ninth place, adding 260,200 Likes to grow to 16.2 million. And, finally, “The Simpsons” were in tenth place, adding 256,200 Likes to a total of 6.2 million doing mostly promotion for the show’s fall premiere.

Super stars were on the list, too. Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo was in fourteenth place, adding 242,900 Likes to get to 10.8 million total by mostly just updating fans about his current playing schedule. Finally, Megan Fox took the number 17 slot this week, adding 209,000 Likes, totaling 12.5 million, and not really updating her Page at all.

The following is a guest post done by Tom, a UK entrepreneur from Wongawise.com. You can visit his blog at http://www.wongawise.com and follow @wongawise on Twitter. If you’re looking for a guide to advertising on Facebook, you should check out Jonathan Volk’s Fb Ads Guide.
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With over 500 million members, Facebook is fast becoming one of the preferred platforms for online advertisers. With the ability to target users by age, sex, interests, location and more; small businesses are replacing shop window and local magazine advertisements with a simple Facebook ad. Last year it was reported that online marketing is bigger than TV, radio and print for the 1st time ever.

As an online marketer, I have seen a massive increase in local businesses marketing online from orthodontists to estate agents to local gyms. Facebook ads are not only easy to setup, but with the right targeting they perform great with VERY little optimization needed. Creating and managing campaigns for local businesses is a fantastic way for online marketers to earn additional income. A lot of small businesses frankly won’t have a clue when it comes to setting up an online ad campaign. If you have the knowledge and experience with such platforms, businesses will be willing to pay you.

I wanted to show you an example of a very simple campaign I set up for a local boxing club here in London, UK which is still running on Facebook. They had a very small budget and were not prepared to pay $x,xxx per month for local newspaper or magazine advertisements.

Facebook provides the perfect platform for local marketing. Not only is quick and easy to set up, but you can target users by location and interests. 2 VERY important aspects when promoting local businesses online. Without location targeting, local marketing does not work for obvious reasons.

We decided upon a daily budget and I set up 4 ads targeting the following users:

who live in the United Kingdom
who live within 40 kilometres of London (Boxing club is in London and people won’t travel much further)
aged 13-40
male and female (they cater for both)
who like boxing (important!)

(We could expand on this and target users interested in other sports or women trying to lose weight.)

We used the following ad title and description:

title: Boxing Classes in London

desc: Interested in Boxing classes in London?
Click here for more info.

(Users were sent directly to the boxing club’s website – no need to create a landing page).

I let the campaign run for 1 month without split testing or changing 1 single aspect and these are the following stats:

659,279 impressions
577 clicks
Avg. CPC = $0.10 (We use GBP in the UK, so this was JUST 6p per click!)
Avg. CTR = 0.088%

As you can see, the ad is simple, direct and to the point and more importantly it’s costing the company just $0.10 per click. Not bad from an ad without any optimization and only showing to a small group of targeted users!

If the CTR begins to drop (as it will with most campaigns after some time), changing the image or title will help to increase it again. Adding further interests to target new users is also a great way to increase CTR and reach a new audience.

So… you may be wondering whether theses ads actually converted to bookings or made the boxing gym any money?!

To be honest I don’t know as of yet, but they have requested to continue running the campaign for the foreseeable future so they must be pleased with the results thus far. In most cases, you will find that local businesses are willing to pay such rates simply for brand awareness and additional exposure. At the end of the day you are being paid for your knowledge and experience to drive cheap and targeted traffic to their products and services. If you deliver this then you’re holding up your end of the bargain and there can be no complaints; especially when it’s costing them just a fraction of what it would cost/is costing them for print, radio or tv advertising.

To manage an online advertising campaign for a local business, you can charge anywhere from $100 per month PLUS their advertising budget. Now I know this may sound incredibly low and in some cases it will be, but the amount you charge simply depends on their budget, your current situation, knowledge and experience as well as how much you’re prepared to work for. This is an example for a very small business with a low budget. When I started managing campaigns for businesses I was more interested in building a list of clients than making thousands of dollars. I knew over time I would earn more once I began managing campaigns for larger companies.

Nevertheless, an additional $100 per month was still well worth having for spending a few minutes each week checking over their campaign. I will be on Facebook managing my own campaigns anyway, so I may as well manage a few others whilst I’m there and get paid for it!

Generally, the budgets will be much greater and you can charge $1,000+ per month to manage a campaign. Just 5 or 10 clients could pocket you an extra $5,000 – $10,000+ per month.

PS. Don’t be shy to charge them a one off setup fee as well as a monthly management fee. A lot of clients will expect it.

So, why is local marketing a great thing to get into?

- You can approach ANY local business. I can assure you that those currently paying for advertising in a local magazine or similar will be interested.

- You can charge a monthly fee to manage their campaign. This provides you with regular, re-occuring revenue.

- There is no limit on how many clients you can take on.

- Word of mouth advertising will increase your list of clients after securing as few as 4 or 5.

- If you’re already promoting your own campaigns on Facebook, managing a handful of campaigns for your clients will be effortless and extremely rewarding without the worry of checking conversions and sales daily.

- There are still a LOT of local businesses not advertising online.

- HUGE potential!!

I hope this post has given you a few ideas and will help you earn a little extra $$$. Good Luck!

© JonathanVolk.com – A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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Just a quick update to the menu of the PPC.bz header.

Added Typo Generator – handy script for getting typos of a word. Should probably have a bulk feature but I don’t feel like scripting it.

Added Bulk Domain Availability Checker – check domains in bulk. Works pretty well. The original script is old so I doubt it supports some of the newer TLD’s.

Added link to YMulti. This is a social network from the YMulti guys, Jay Styles and Amish. Yes, the same people behind the link I just removed – CPAHustle.com. Let’s see if Amish and Jay stop smoking enough weed to keep this new forum alive for more than 4 weeks.