Do you buttons such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Wovre etc on your website?

AddThis is one of several bookmarking and sharing services you can use for your website. Basically instead of placing the icons on your website and linking to the ever-changing bookmarking and sharing service it does it for you.
10 advantages of using the AddThis service:

1. It’s free
2. It is being updated with new bookmarking and sharing services all the time
3. It can also include ‘email to a friend’ and ‘print’
4. You can control what bookmarking and sharing services you display in the pop-up
5. It gives you analytics so that can track and report on what people are bookmarking and sharing (your need to create an account)
6. It can be styled and customised to your own website
7. It has over 20 translated languages
8. It’s fast to load and easy to implement
9. It can be implemented on several different types of websites
10. One account can be used for several websites

This method is very powerful and can make you a lot of money with very little effort in a short time.

It could also get you banned from AdWords and your Network really quick, so use it with caution and only if you absolutely have to.

For example, if you can’t pay your Hosting, use it to make $200 quickly.

It is well known that Trademarks and Brands are the most profitable keywords, this is why most companies do not allow their affiliates to bid on them.

If you try to bid on a trademarked term using Google AdWords, the system will not allow you to do so. This is because the company owning the brand has asked Google to restrict it.

Step 1: Keywords

When you enter the trademarked term as a keyword into your Adgroup the system will detect the term and it will not display your ads.

So, to get around this, when you enter your keywords into your Adgroup,

for the keyword write

“t.r.a.d.e.m.a.r.k”

or

“t-r-a-d-e-m-a-r-k”

instead of

“trademark”

This should work most of the time. (There are exceptions.)

The system will not recognize the branded term, but when it comes to matching your keywords it will just ignore the dots or dashes and display your Ad for the search term “trademark”.

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Step 2: Ad Text

If you want to enter the trademark into your Ad text the system again will recognize the term and not allow you to do it.

The way around is the {ifsearch} parameter.

I will not explain here what this parameter is for and how it works, but you can look it up if you are interested.

The way you write your ad is this:

Trad{ifsearch}emark
Looking for Trad{ifsearch}emark?
Buy Here Now Today!
www.trademark.com

instead of:

Trademark
Looking for Trademark?
Buy Here Now Today!
www.trademark.com

As you can see, you have to insert {ifsearch} somewhere inside of the trademark term.

Now the system can not detect the trademarked term in your ads, but when the ad is displayed to the searcher the {ifsearch} will not be displayed and the searcher will only see “Trademark”.

Keep in mind however that the {ifsearch} is counted to the number of the allowed characters in your Ad text, so for the Headline you have only 15 characters left since the {ifsearch} already uses 10 characters.

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Step 3: Referer

So far, so good. Now you have to fake the referer. If you do not fake the referer the company owning the trademark can look at the records of the network and see that your clicks are coming from Google Search and the keywords you have used.

I do this using a Perl script. I have tried Meta Refreshes and double Meta Refreshes, but Perl has worked most reliably for me.

This has also been confirmed by my Aff. Manager at CJ.

This is the script, save it with the extension .cgi

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#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# redir.cgi
$| = 1;

use strict;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
use HTTP::Request::Common qw(GET POST);
use LWP::UserAgent;

my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
$ua->agent(”Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”);

my $url = ‘INSERT YOU AFFILIATE LINK HERE’;
my $req = GET $url, Referer => “http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=non-trademark&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=”;
$req->header(’Accept’ => ‘text/html’);
my $res = $ua->request($req);

if ($res->is_success) {
print “Location: $urlnn”;
} else {
print “Error: ” . $res->status_line . “n”;
}

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There are three important parameters here:

$ua->agent

This will allow you to fake the user agent, you can change this to whatever you like.

my $url

Here you put in the URL you want to redirect to, your affiliate URL.

my $req

This enables you to change the referer. In the above example this is what the referer would look like if the searcher would be be coming from Google Search Germany, using a German Browser and would have searched for the term “non-trademark”. You can look at the url field of your browser after doing a search to find out how this should look like in your situation. You could also change the referer to “http://www.facebook.com/”.

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Since Google AdWords is my bread and butter I only use this very sparingly, because I don’t want to get banned and go through the hassle of getting a new account.

There are several ways to use this, you can bid on a large brand that has a lot of traffic, and only do it for 30 minutes or only in certain geographical areas. Be sure to exclude the location of your network, the location of the company owning the brand and possibly their advertising agency.

When I first did this i could not stop the campaign soon enough and made 500 in commissions in 30 minutes. Very suspicious, but I got away with it.

Also, big companys often monitor ads very closely or use software to monitor them. Only run your ads in the late evening or on the weekends.

The other, safer method is to bid on smaller company brands, since they are generally not able to monitor the search network so closely.

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As I said in the beginning this is extremely profitable.

The cool thing is that your advertising costs will be almost zero, since technically it should not be possible for you to bid on these terms and you will only be bidding against the brand owners inhouse advertising team or their agency.

I usually bid fairly high, like 4,97 per click and I will use position bidding on position 1. And I will only pay 0,01 to 0,05 per click.

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One last word: Don’t use this for ringtones, or weigthloss or anything fishy that could trigger a manual review of your campaign. Also if your Ads get rejected for some reason, don’t re-submit them as this could also trigger a manual review.

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Important Additional Information!

I just realized that I forgot something vital:

When setting up your Ad Text you will first do a search for the term you want to bid on and look at the Ads the company/agency is running.

Then you will copy the Ads of the company/agency exactly.

This way, if they check Google, they will not realize that there is your Ad being displayed unless they click on it.

here’s a five-part series at Copyblogger called SEO Copywriting 2.0.

It’s a really cool and useful breakdown of what you can do with your copy to really boost your results in Google. I’d recommend reading the whole series for good ideas on how you can tailor your blog posts for a better showing.

But it’s a five part series, and let’s face it, most of us are lazy. So here’s the big not-so-secret secret: almost 90% of what you can do to get good search results is get linked to.

As Brian Clark puts it:

That’s why any true SEO copywriter is simply a writer who has a knack for tuning in to the needs and desires of the target audience. And due to the pursuit of links, those needs and desires have to be nailed well before you’ll ever show up in the search engines.

…

“Ask yourself what creates value for your users,” sayeth Google. As those brainy engineers continue to diligently create better algorithms, combined with people-powered social media tagging and blog-driven links, copywriters with a flair for prompting link response and conversions will become vital members of any search engine marketing effort.

In other words, good SEO copywriting is linkbait.

I think that it goes a little bit farther than that, though: I’m betting on Google. Google’s entire business is based around providing the best search results to whoever is searching.

So my strategy has always been this:

1. Who do I want to reach?
2. What are they searching for?
3. What is the best response to that question?

And that’s what I try to write.

Everyone knows that Web 2.0 technologies have permanently shaken up the practice of Search Engine Optimization. But when people discuss the confluence of Web 2.0 and SEO, they’re usually talking about blogging. After all, we all know that search engines love blogs because they’re dynamic, link to each other frequently and have well-structured code. Blogs usually beat metatagging and link exchanges on a static website.

But what about Facebook applications? Until recently, search engines weren’t indexing them. But according to Justin Smith of Inside Facebook:

Facebook recently enabled developers to serve XML sitemaps off the apps.facebook.com. Sitemaps are used by webmasters to notify search engines of updates to pages and page structure, and generally are a worthwhile exercise in any SEO strategy. Since apps are served from apps.facebook.com, developers get to ride on the back of Facebook’s PageRank – potentially a big leg up on regular web apps.

As of this writing, the domain www.facebook.com has a Google PageRank of 8. It’s entirely possible that a well-optimized application page could be indexed by Google as being more relevant than a company’s own website. An inbound link from an application page could also make your site more relevant.

If you’re attempting to make the case for developing a Facebook applicatio to reach your audience, don’t forget to mention the SEO benefit to your boss.

As we continue to help clients in their social media outreach strategies, I’m starting to notice that more and more people are turning away from blogs and blogger engagement to focus instead on social networking sites. Which begs an interesting question: does blogger engagement still matter?

After all, if you can generate good word of mouth and drive sales from efforts in sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace, why bother to court the hard-to-reach and often hard-to-impress blogerati like Scoble, Arrington, or Om?

Here’s why: because they’re hard to reach, and hard to impress, and everybody knows it. These bloggers have spent time building up a brand, and that carries value when they talk about your products or your messages.

Harnessing this trust, this existing relationship, is why it still matters to work with bloggers who have a name and a following, instead of simply trusting in the effectiveness of blind, stranger-to-stranger word-of-digital-mouth marketing.

Free ads

Denise and Patsi of The Blog Squad posted today about a client of theirs whose blog has brought him a great deal of new business.

“My blog…has been the single best action I have taken in the way of marketing for my company and myself,” wrote Mark Siegel, Managing Director of Golf Asian in an unsolicited testimonial. “I…have seen over $250,000 of new business come in just from people reading the blog and gaining confidence in dealing with my Thailand golf travel company.”

I always enjoy hearing these success stories, even when they involve our competition. For small business owners, this is a great indicator of just how helpful a business blog can be in getting the word out about what you have to offer.

The marketers present here at FiRe not only seem to embracing social media as a great way to drive sales, but in at least two cases, it’s been the only/main way they have promoted their wares.

From the podium this morning, Dave Winer was asked if there was a business model for podcasters. His response was that one might not get paid directly for podcasting, but there might be indirect revenues. As an example, he said that Scripting News was successful in generating sales revenues (I assume for Userland Software) and yet the business never took out ads. Winer indicated that his blog was the key traffic driver.

During lunch I was fortunate enough to sit next to Simon Hackett who is the founder and managing director of Internode Systems, and Agile Communications. Coincidentally, Internode also has not spent any money to speak of on traditional outreach and yet has been extremely successful. Simon told me that much of their success has been due to the positive word of mouth exposure gained from hundreds of hours he’s spent monitoring and contributing to the broadband community forum whirlpool.

In the Wall Street Journal article New Services Help Bloggers Bring in Ad Revenue, reporter Kelly K. Spors says “If you’re not making money off your blog, 2008 might be the year.”

Spors profiles several bloggers and the services available to generate revenue. Here are some revenue specifics to inspire you:

Rhett Butler, founder of Mongabay.com, a site with articles on rainforest conservation and other environmental issues, makes $15,000 to $18,000 a month from AdSense, using various types of ads. Mr. Butler says his blog currently gets about 1.3 million unique visitors per month.

He’s planning to eventually experiment with Google’s video player ads and create his own video content for the site. “The rainforest has always been my passion, but I never expected to make a living off of it,” says Mr. Butler, who quit his job as a product manager in 2003 when he realized he could make a living off his site.

Darren Rowse, the Melbourne, Australia-based writer of ProBlogger.net, a popular blog that teaches other bloggers how to make money, earned roughly $250,000 in 2007 off ads on three blogs he writes. Mr. Rowse says he makes the most off traditional display advertising, where advertisers pay a fee to appear, but he also has used affiliate ads and Google AdSense.

The great thing about Problogger.net is that the site is all about how to achieve the kind of success Darren has. Lots of great tips and techniques straight from the horse’s mouth.

Recently, Terri Kay of the PR Web PodTeam sat down with our speaker John Battelle for an interview about how blogging and search are affecting marketing and media.

If you’re looking for a taste of what John’s keynote will look like, the resulting podcast will give you a pretty good idea. Here’s a rough breakdown of what he covered in just eight short minutes:

* The message to businesses about blogging (:51)
* How search is behind the shift in business communications (2:05)
* How “Marketing Judo” can help you turn a negative into a positive (3:00)
* What happens if you don’t respond when people comment: “It’s kinda rude” (4:00)
* Symantec “Macs don’t get a lot of viruses” (4:29)
* GM blogging about environmental issues with the Chevy Tahoe (5:29)
* Businesses are used to hiding behind a brand, letting your audience judge you in real time is scary (6:30)

I think the big message here is that businesses are used to a level of control that is no longer possible, and that’s scary. The sooner you get over that paralyzing fear, the better. But don’t take my word for it. Come to the conference and hear John.

Our law panel truly has a lot to say. Kevin O’Keefe, Buzz Bruggeman and Phil Mann recently sat down for a podcast interview with (Blog Business Summit sponsor) PR Web’s Terri Kay was a terrific showcase of the larger issues they’ll be covering in their panel at the end of day one of our upcoming conference.

And here’s some more interesting legal commentary from our speakers. Not to rehash old news with regard to the Apple/PodcastReady cease and desist letter, but I thought this was worth posting as it gives a good sense of the kind of legal expertise we’ll be featuring on the legal panel.

For those of you who didn’t hear about it, about a month ago Apple sent what Wired called a “nastygram” to PodcastReady asserting that they held a trademark on the term “pod”. The letter called on them to cease and desist use of the term immediately.

“This is a classic example of why business people ‘love’ their lawyers,” wrote our legal panelist Phil Mann. “The lawyers here may be legally right, but do their actions really make business sense?”

The enhanced communications platform of the blogosphere inhibits the old top-down control over a brand. People use the term “google” as a verb in the same way that they used to refer to tissues as “kleenex,” adhesive first aid strips as “band-aids” and copies as “xerox.”

“Let’s assume ‘pod’ and ‘podcast’ are legally protected and Apple can indeed prohibit their unauthorized use,” continued Mann. “Great. The rest of the world then stops referring to ‘pods’, ‘podcast’ and ‘podcast ready.’ And what happens next? Some competitor without the same name recognition steps up and says, ‘I’ll be happy to let you use MY name without any complaint from me,’ and a small, unknown player gets far better free advertising than it could ever hope to buy. This isn’t that far-fetched. Many companies have stupidly handed incredibly lucrative gifts to their competitors through short-sighted emphasis on ‘protecting’ their legal rights.”

The lesson here seems to be that companies have to be careful to tread the line between keeping traditional control over their brand and opening a door for their competitors to use the social media echo chamber to amplify their own brand.