Internet Marketing GuideMo' Money – Make $$$ Online

Jeremy Litwicki owns Profit Addiction and writes about ways to help you build profitable Internet marketing campaigns.

Every marketer, including myself, loves to write about the successful campaigns. As a blogger/marketer, continually telling people about how you suck and cannot make money just would not build credibility. Unfortunately, this creates a HUGE misconception that every Internet marketer who has a blog automatically turns every campaign to gold. Personally, when I started Internet marketing, I would read about somebody making great money online and figured it was something that just took time to learn, and after the learning curve, you are set and will make consistent money and can automatically create a profitable campaign.

Wrong.

There is a learning curve, sure, and the more time you invest in your marketing efforts will definitely increase your chances for success. However, I can build two campaigns simultaneously and one can turn out to be a $X,XXX/day earner while the other is losing $XXX/day. It just happens.

The point of this post is to let you know that not every single campaign will be a winner. Very rarely will a campaign be profitable during the initial tests. Many times, even after spending time and money to try to make a campaign work, it still will not work.

Here are 3 reasons why you are continuously failing on your campaigns (specifically Facebook) and a solution for each.

Lack of Overall Focus

This is very common with beginning marketers and sometimes a trap that anyone can fall into. Whenever I notice campaigns are not working as I want, I take a step back and evaluate my business and what has been going on. More often than not, during these times of slow growth, it is almost entirely due to the fact that I have not been focused.

Focus, in terms of a marketing campaign, can mean a handful of different things:

• Testing too many offers
• Lack of research (usually due to too many offers)
• Jumping onto every ‘hot’ new trend

If you read my blog, I have mentioned the fact that being/staying focused is very important to your success.
If you notice you are not seeing the results you hoped for, especially if you have had some success in the past, chances are you need to take a step back and regain your focus.

You can improve your lack of focus by building ONE new, solid campaign. It will probably turn out better than your previous thrown-together campaigns that you were spending less time on.

Too Little Focus on CTR

I have found the key to profitable campaigns on Facebook lies heavily in achieving a high CTR (click-through-rate). I did a case study about ways to increase CTR on Facebook and published a post about it on my blog. I was very happy with the results, and given the 40,000,000 impressions served, I figured it was enough data to support my claims.
Spend more time and money developing a solid CTR by performing intelligent split-tests and you will notice it is not as difficult as you thought to double, triple, or even ten-fold your original CTR!

Lack of Creativity

I actually wrote another post about being creative on Facebook and how if you do nothing but copy other campaigns, you are not only severely decreasing the chances of continued success of the person you copied, but you are nearly guaranteeing that YOUR efforts will not be profitable either.

Creativity goes a very long way. Here are a few examples of how I created some of my best performing ads:

• Modified an existing picture – Anybody can go find a picture of a person for dating, but very few will modify them with borders, additional color, special effects, etc.
• Created a picture – I am not an artist so you don’t have to be either. This could be as simple as opening MS Paint and scribbling. You would be surprised how some of your creations will perform.
• Talked with friends – Do you promote dating? Do you have any single friends? Ask them what would make THEM click on an ad. Get inside the head of your target market and use that to your advantage.
• Used fresh images – Usually I have access to a profile where I can see what ads are being shown to my target market. When building a new campaign, I find images I have not seen before so they are fresh and usually give me higher CTR.

As a marketer, creativity is your fuel. Use it to your advantage. If you are not very creative (I never have been, actually), you will have to work a little harder at this. With practice, it is not difficult to train yourself to think more creatively.

ProfitAddiction’s Million Dollar Closing Tip:

If you say to yourself “this idea is really stupid”… Try it anyways.
Seriously.

Facebook is testing a new rich feed story for when your friends Like official Pages. Instead of showing up as a simple one-line text only story, users see the profile picture of the Page and a description from the Page’s info. These stories are both significantly larger and more compelling, and could drive new Likes to Pages without the need for paid advertising.

The new stories only appear for Likes of official, claimed Pages, and not for Likes of  Community Pages. Users see the profile picture and description appended under the “[Name] Likes [Page name]” text which is identical to to the traditional feed stories for Page Likes. The description is taken from first section after Website in a Page’s info tab. Rich Page Like stories for business Pages show the Company Overview, and stories for musicians show the Biography.

By including the profile picture and description, users seeing the story get just enough information about the Page to be enticed to click through and learn more. Facebook recently released a Page discovery tool, showing the company is focusing on how to get users to both learn about new Pages and make their Likes more accurately reflect their real world interests. Offering the implicit recommendations of Pages by friends in such a central location is an efficient way to accomplish these goals, since those in your network probably have similar or intriguing interests.

Rich feed stories for Likes could have a big impact on marketers.  Many Pages buy ads to generate new Likes, but strengthening the news feed as a viral channel for Page growth would decrease the need for these ads.

Today Facebook begins rolling out multiple improvements to its photos product. Users will be able to upload and download high resolution photos, quickly view photos in a pop-up light box view without leaving the page they are currently viewing, utilize two bulk tagging features to tag one person in multiple photos simultaneously, and use a streamlined and more reliable Flash uploading tool. Despite the monetary cost, Facebook has made the changes to keep the world’s most popular photos product technologically competitive.

Five months ago Facebook acquired photo sharing startup Divvyshot, who’s founder Sam Odio product managed these changes. Odio tells us “We took a fresh look at the photos product, built a new vision, and this is first step towards that vision. Facebook is building out a larger photos team, photos are becoming a priority within the company, and it’s something we felt like we should be doing for our users.” The new changes will only go live for a small random subset of users later today because of the 100 million photos Facebook takes in a day. However, barring any significant problems, the changes will be rolled out to 100% of the user base over the next few weeks.

High Resolution Photos

Users will now have the option to upload photos at 2048 pixels along the largest side as well as Facebook’s standard 720 pixels. This 8 times improvement in quality will cover the resolution of photos taken by most consumer cameras. Larger photos, such as those shot with DSLRs, will be re-sized down to 2048 pixels, or roughly 6000 kilobytes, on the user’s side just before the upload occurs. This means that if you try to upload a 6 megabyte photo, you won’t have to wait for that large file to be sent to Facebook. Users will still have to be patient, however, as the uploader notes high resolution photos take up to 10 times longer to upload.

Anyone will be able to view the print quality, high resolution photos on Facebook’s web interface, and there will be a link below them to initiate a download of a .jpg of the photo. The high resolution will allows users to print 5×7 inch photos at 300 DPI, or perhaps even 8×10s, without any degradation of the image. High resolution photos will also be available through the API, opening opportunities for print products, and high resolution photo experiences on HD televisions. Odio says he’s excited to see what the API partners come up with.

Facebook will still be using its Haystack storage infrastructure for high resolution photos. The significant drop in storage costs over the last five years makes the high resolution feasible, but it will still cost millions of dollars. Odio says, “Zuckberg made the decision. He though users would appreciate high resolution. He looked at the tab and said ‘Let’s do it.’” Odio explained that all the other major photo sharing sites offer high resolution, including Divvyshot, and while Facebook had previously been focused on sharing memories, not pixels, Facebook is ready to “get with the times”.

Light Box View Of Photos

Soon, you will be able to click a photo anywhere on site, on the news feed or within albums, and the photo will load over a darkened background of the content you were viewing. You can then browse to adjacent photos, or click out or hit escape to close the light box and resume viewing the page you were previously looking at. The view will also include comments and Likes below the photo, only one advertisement instead of two, and the total amount of other text and distracting graphics will be minimal.

Light box view will also help photos load faster. Instead of sending a get http request for a whole new page which would have to be generated by the server and sent back, now Facebook will just construct the light box over your current page and immediately start downloading the image. The image may appear first, followed by the comments and Likes a tiny fraction of a second later.

The change should help users keep their desktops tidy. Previously when users wanted to retain their place in Facebook but view a photo, they would typically load the photo in a new tab. Odio say, “This seemed like a clumsy experience. The funny thing is that everyone is tracking page views. This change will probably cause a significant hit to page views, but we but we think it’s better. It loads much faster and you don’t lose your context in the content you were interested in.”

Bulk Tagging

When you go to any album page, you’ll be able to click “Tag photo”, enter a friend’s name, click the face of that friend in multiple photo thumbnails, and hit save to simultaneously tag that person in all of those photos. “People were doing an incredible amount of tagging, but it seemed like a terrible user experience to have to tag each individual photo separately”. Odio says it might sound difficult to pinpoint faces in thumbnails, but it’s actually quite easy.

The original uploader of photos will have access to an express bulk tagging system. Facebook will recognize the same face being present in multiple photos, and temporarily the group photos with the same face together making it easy to tag that person in all those photos simultaneously. This should alleviate uploader tagging fatigue, which frequently resulted in users leaving their friends to tag themselves.

Flash Uploader and Streamlined Flow

Facebook is implementing a new Flash uploader which increases reliability and takes advantage of the greater market penetration of Flash. Facebook has experimented with Java clients and browser plugins over the years, but rewrote the uploader in Flash for its ability to select multiple photos at once. The upload flow has also been streamlined. When you hit “upload photos” you’ll immediately begin selecting photos, and not be first asked to create and name an album as you were before.

Reliability is measured by how many users who at first click “upload” actually end up with new photos appearing on the site. Facebook expects at 5-10% increase in reliability thanks to the Flash uploader and streamlined flow. While users in the US with modern computers and fast connections might not see much difference, users in countries like Indonesia with older computers and worse connections will have a much improved upload experience.

I have been a great friend with Kanoa for a handful of years now, we’ve had the opportunity to go down to Mexico and do humanitarian work by helping build up and repair the local infrastructure. Kanoa is an up and coming photographer with a similar heart for people and investing into the lives of people. He has recently had the opportunity to serve and support people in Africa, Brazil, and Mexico, and is currently seeking to bring humanitarian aid to The Lord’s Table Church and School in Port-Au-Prince in Haiti, which is right in the middle of the devastation of the earthquake.

I allowed him to write a guest post below in hopes of having some of you donate (Tax Deductible) to support the cause and raise as much as possible for these children.

Kanoa’s Message:

I just wanted you all to be the first to know that I have been given a unique opportunity to do humanitarian work in Haiti! I plan on heading out on October 21-25th. There, we will be working with The Lord’s Table Church and School right in the region of where this disaster started, in Port-au-Prince. I have recently been taking a handful of Early Childhood Education classes and look forward to applying my skills to help aid in any way that I can in this time of a humanitarian crisis. I will also be photo-journaling the entire experience and posting it on my site. In the near future, I hope to be able to respond in these situations more often as well as document all of my future endeavors.

“So that’s great Kanoa! But how does this apply to me?”

Well you know how you have seen those infomercials or video clips where you are asked to help out, well here’s your chance! You have the chance to Directly affect people’s lives in Haiti! I am asking for any support I can get financially.

I truly believe that for every single dollar donated, is one child you could aid (and the great part is I’m not asking for a recurring fee, but whatever you can give.) I have been messaging other organizations that will be able to send in supplies to this school.

I realized that if I just brought in food they would still be hungry, but if we can give a person an education then they can be raised up to be the leaders of tomorrow. This is a huge vision, and huge visions can sometimes spell M-O-N-E-Y. I don’t want to pressure or guilt anyone into feeling compelled to give, but I know this will be a unique opportunity to help me get there, where I am confident that every dollar will be used to rebuild the broken down school, as well as give the child an opportunity to change their life for the better. I have already sent out messages to thousands of people in my community and have had a great response.

If you would like to send a check you can put Attn: Kanoa’s Haiti Fund

PLUS You’ll receive a tax write-off for that donation and send it to:

Kanoa’s Haiti Fund
PO Box 5186
Concord CA 94524

If any of you would like a tax write off form for this, please include a note and one will be sent to you.

I appreciate all your support!

Warmest Regards,
Kanoa Utler
Photographer
KanoaUtler.com

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

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In my guru spam email box, I saw this gem in my Spam folder.

When I started this email account, I signed up to a bunch of guru newsletters for shits and giggles. Howie Schwartz (I feel more Jewish just saying that) immediately became the most annoying one. This dude likes to email his “list” multiple times a day. By multiple I mean like 10-20 times a day. It’s all the same email too, maybe written slightly different to “split test.” I must of signed up 2 or 3 times cause I kept seeing slight variations of the same email.

Anyway, Howie’s main “gimmick” is “I’m taking this down tonight! Hurry!” His other defining factor is very poorly written emails. Like he does about his day and just sends these from a Blackberry or something. “I gotta take a massive shit so I’ll send an email blast to my list.”

After about a week days of this shit, I report it as spam cause its so fucking annoying. (This was months ago). Sometimes, his emails slip through and I saw this one…..

Looks like Howie’s just given up on life. “Hey guys do this. Here are links to things. Top affiliates do them.”

The moral of this story is that if you’re signed up to guru newsletters for inspiration (don’t get me wrong, some of them do know how to sell, and it doesn’t hurt to rip some ideas by keeping a throwaway email box), Howie Schwartz isn’t one of them.

Top affiliates, my ass.

You’re better off learning from a pro, not a schlep.

Recently, we launched the Inside Network Job Board – dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at CafeMom, Fuel Industries, OneRecovery, Storm8, Toy Studio, and Electronic Arts.

• Producer / Product Manager – Games (New York, NY)

• Data User Analyst (Culver City, CA)

• Senior Analytics Engineer (Del Mar, CA)

• Senior Game Designer (Redwood City, CA)
  
• Senior Game Artist (Redwood City, CA)

• Senior Flash Developer (Chicago, IL)

• Director of Technology – EA2D (Redwood City, CA)
  

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets on the sites. That way, you can be sure that your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Facebook has rolled out its location service Places to France and Australia. The launch in both nations this week may signal an acceleration of the roll out. Facebook appears to be giving access to countries with a large Facebook audience, and at least some iPhone market penetration. The two nations join the United States, the UK, Canada, and Japan bringing the total number which can access Places via the Facebook for iPhone app or touch.facebook.com to six.

France has the fifth largest Facebook audience in the world, according to the Facebook Global Monitor, and a relatively high 4.08% market penetration for the iPhone according to AdMob via Nelso. It is the second non-English speaking country to gain Places access, following the technologically advanced Japan.

Italy has an iPhone market penetration of only 1.26% according to AdMob, the lowest of any country with Places access. However, it is the country with the sixth largest Facebook population, meaning Facebook may factoring in size more than iPhone penetration for determining the order of the roll out.

Now that Places has launched in Australia, the four major English-speaking nations all have access. Australia has a 6.96% iPhone market penetration according to AdMob via Nelso. It was one of the nations most eager to use Places, with many from the country accessing the feature via U.S.-hosted VPN accounts. Facebook also opened a sales office in Australia last year.

The launch of Places in Italy could mean other non-English speaking countries which have a large Facebook audience in Western Europe, such as Germany and Spain could be in line for roll out. The launch in France could mean others with high iPhone market penetration, such as Switzerland, Denmark and Singapore, might be the next countries to gain Places access. Ireland remains the only large predominantly English speaking country without access. Facebook may also be taking the same distribution strategy it used for rolling out access to Facebook itself, namely launching in the most trendy locations first. This in turn makes Places seem cool, leading to rapid adoption wherever it’s offered.

This article contains data excerpts from Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data membership service tracking Facebook’s traffic growth and demographic landscape in global markets.

[Thanks to Joffrey, James Norquay, and Vincenzo Cosenza for the tips]

Irish developer BetaPond has released two applications which integrate Facebook Places. LoyaltyBuilder is a branded multi-venue checkin leaderboard tab application which helps businesses encourage users to check in to specific Places. I Spy Places is a simple Places dashboard which lets users see a map and list of check-ins by them or any one friend at a time.

Along with the user interface for Places, Facebook released read and search APIs, with a write API on the way. Using the first two, developers can pull information from users about their checkins and use the data to power applications; BetaPond’s LoyaltyBuilder and I Spy Places are some of the first apps to make use of these APIs.

One issue with Places for multi-national brands or businesses with multiple physical locations is that they may have multiple Places to which they want to encourage checkins. Some Places leaderboards, like the ones made by Context Optional, only allow Pages to track checkins to a single Place. LoyaltyBuilder lets brands monitor checkins to multiple Places, and total checkins and points from across the different Places to gives users a score and ranking. Brands can add a description of their loyalty program or message of of encouragement within the app. By offering recognition to users who check in to a brand’s Places most frequently, the app incentivizes users to make the checkins, sharing their affiliation with the Places to their network.

Brands can also use the app to conduct rewards contests, for instance rewarding a prize or discount to whoever is at the top of the leaderboard at a certain time. BetaPond can further customize LoyaltyBuilder to client specifications in addition to the self-service app. Brands can get great exposure from users checking in to their Places, so apps which remind and reward users to do so are a smart move for businesses.

I Spy Places lets users see all of a person’s checkins on one screen. The default view and My Places tab show a user’s own check-ins in a list and as icons on a map. The Where Have My Friends Been button brings up a row of profile pictures of friends above the map. Users can click a friend to see their checkin history. The app lacks analytics and a current checkin feed provided by PlacePop’s power user dashboard, and only viewing one friend at once isn’t especially useful. Some users may enjoy the ability to quickly visit the Places page of any Place a friend has checked in to.

Developers are just beginning to explore how to use the Places APIs. To date, apps have focused mainly on tracking check-ins after they’ve been made, but we expect more which help users connect with others currently at the same Place to be released soon.

Facebook is looking for people to fill positions in content strategy, research, communication, commerce, intellectual property, a few positions in Latin America, online sales and market solutions, according to listings recently added to the company’s Careers page this week.

A couple Software Engineering positions point to Facebook’s growing Credits and e-commerce businesses. The Commerce Infrastructure and Commerce Platform software engineering positions will be based in Palo Alto. “Together with the accelerating digital goods and services industry, Facebook Credits usage is growing rapidly, so there will be plenty of challenges across the stack,” the listings say.

The Manager of Facebook Research is set to be part of the Design and User Experience team helping Facebook drive the “overall strategy and operations of the research team.” This person will oversee taking research to the next step by partnering with production development and “unlock the potential of Facebook.” Perks include an equity stake in Facebook and gourmet meals served thrice daily. Design and User Experience is also seeking a Manager of Content Strategy to help guide the company’s content management team based in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Communications team is looking for an Associate Manager of Policy Communications to work in either Palo Alto or Washington, D.C. This position is set to focus on policy, privacy, safety and security issues and work with government agencies, public officials and advocacy groups. Requisites include being strong writings, tech and political experience and press relations.

Facebook is also seeking an Associate Manager for Privacy and Intellectual Property – User Operations to help the company “build and scale” that part of the business. The person who’s hired will manage two teams of people managing incoming privacy and intellectual property violations.

There were also some interesting jobs opening up in Sales and Business Development. The Director for Online Sales and Operations, Asia-Pacific and Latin America to be based in Palo Alto and work on refining the company’s advertising model in these regions, specifically, to scale Facebook’s advertising system to fit these regions. Then, the Head of Online Sales Account Management, also based in Palo Alto, is to be asked to help guide Facebook’s strategy for its largest online advertisers and mid-market brands.

Finally, two Platform and Product positions based in Palo Alto are geared towards helping make Facebook relevant both as an advertising platform and venue for marketing for automotive and retail brands. The Strategist for Market Solutions (Autos) is set to position Facebook “as a critical element in the marketing mix” by partnering with Sales to provide solutions for auto brands, develop messaging and market strategies specifically for these clients and demonstrate the value of Facebook to these clients. The Retail Strategist for Market Solutions similarly partners with Sales to create venues for retailers to market on Facebook.

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