1. Affiliate Marketing

What: Many people in Internet Marketing today began their journey with AM (affiliate marketing). AM is basically selling other companies products or services and getting paid a commission to do so. Affiliate Marketing is growing Very quickly,  affiliate payouts top more than 6.5 Billion annually.

Tips: Pick an unsaturated niche. Try to find products within that niche that are not being sold heavily by others. Better yet, try to work out an exclusive relationship with a new company to be their only/first affiliate.

Resources: Find things to promote:  CJ.com, Clickbank.com, Linkshare.com

Experts: JohnChow.com, Shoemoney.com, Affiliatetip.com

2. PPC Arbitrage

What: Pay Per Click Arbitrage was a technique used successfully by many internet marketers 3-5 years ago to make literally millions of dollars. The concept is to exploit the price difference between Adwords and Adsense, or other PPC services. Basically finding keywords that cost very little to deliver large amounts of traffic to landing pages or sites built to encourage visitors to click on Adsense ads. When the profits from visitors clicking on Adsense ads exceeded the price paid to Google’s Adwords program, you’ve built a successful arbitrage campaign. Google and other PPC companies have cracked down hard on this sort of thing, but PPC arbitrage still exists in some forms online.

Tips: Learn ALL the rules. Most PPC networks have done their best to completely eliminate arbitrage, this technique has real potential still, but requires TONS of research to figure out ways to make it still work. As always, niche is everything, pick obscure topics. The biggest tip here is really just to understand that arbitrage can be done with nearly anything, so look for new opportunities. For example, Twitter Arbitrage is a potentially huge new market. Read this.

Resources: The Basics

3. Website Flipping

What: You’ve heard of house flipping, the process of buying a “diamond in the rough” house, fixing it up, and reselling for a profit. A similar concept can be applied very successfully to web properties. In a down economy, there are TONS of websites being sold for pennies on the dollar. The trick to being successful with it is being able to pick up on the ones that have the most potential.

Tips: Find sites that are aged (at least a few years), have decent link profiles (thousands of links), and that have poor site-side SEO and design. This applies doubly for e-commerce properties, by remedying duplicate content issue, indexing problems, link structure problems, conversion roadblocks etc, you can double, triple, even quadruple profitability. Once you’ve increased profitability, either keep it, or resell at a large profit.

Resources: Flippa site marketplace,Websitebroker.com, Guide

4. E-Commerce and Dropshipping

What: E-commerce websites are among the most profitable online, and can be a great long-term investment. Having an E-commerce site that sells dropshipped products (products shipped from a third party distributor) gives you the ability to offer products without having to purchase them upfront, or store them. Using this strategy, overhead is almost completely eliminated, and the focus can be put on site optimization and marketing.

Tips: Niche is everything in E-commerce. Don’t bother with clothing, shoes, electronics, these niches are saturated. Focus on under-served niches. semi-taboo/strange products can be especially lucrative.

Resources:GetElastic.com , Forum

5. Domaining

What: One of the oldest and most lucrative ways to make money online. Domaining is the process of buying and selling domain names. Early domainers made millions of dollars in very short periods of time by being the first to buy domains that later were in very high demand. The domaining landscape is different today, but still can be very profitable for those that know what they are doing.

Tips: Be creative, forecasting trends, memes, rising celebs, can all be great ways to snap up domains that will be worth money in the short term. Also look for opportunities to buy undervalued domain names in a down economy. There are some great deals to be had these days. Domain names are a shrinking commodity, there is still money to be made here.

Resources: Namepros Forum, DN Forum, Pickydomains.com

6. Create and Sell Info Products

What: One of the best ways to make a sustainable income online is to sell your own products. If you aren’t interested in e-commerce or dropshipping, and writing and research are your forte, then creating and selling informational products like e-books might be your ticket to Internet Cash. E-books and other info products can be created for almost any conceivable problem, from “How to regrow hair”, to “How to get an ex back”, to “How to put on 10lbs of muscle in 30 days.” Info products can then be sold directly by you, or by utilizing affiliates through services like Clickbank.com.

Tips: Niche info products are key, look for under-served communities looking for resources that aren’t being provided for them. Be comprehensive with your info products and offer real value, mediocre e-books will fail.

Resources: More Info

7. Offline and Local Affiliate Marketing

What:Affiliate products and services don’t have to be promoted only through online channels, many affiliate marketers have found success driving traffic and getting sales by marketing online products through offline means. This can include fliers, business cards, or other grassroots efforts. Think for instance placing flyers for online weight loss affiliate programs on cars at local gyms.

Another offline/online affiliate marketing method is to approach local businesses with creating a custom affiliate program. Car dealerships, limo services, lawyers, clubs, restaurants, contractors, mechanics.. TONS of local businesses would be willing to pay for customers you send to them. Depending on how competitive local terms are, it might be quite simple to rank for such terms with little online marketing efforts.

Tips: When selling affiliate products offline, be creative and be targeted. Don’t waste your time by passing out 500 fliers to random people, pick a niche and corresponding demographic in places where they congregate. When looking to set up offline affiliate programs, go after high ticket items, the more a conversion is worth to the company, the more they will pay you.

Resources: Example, Forum

8. Produce Viral Videos

What: Viral content, especially videos can generate huge numbers of viewers and a few video networks are willing to pay content producers by the views. There are several sites that will pay you based on the number of views you generate. Youtube does this through their application/invite only partner program, and Revver.com does it for all users.

Tips: If you’re looking to make big bucks with this method, it’s unlikely. Youtube and Revver.com pay a pittance for the traffic, but it can be a great way to monetize your videos at least a little bit for some extra cash.  The big money in viral videos comes from producing them for clients. If you can prove success with your own projects, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get work doing freelance viral video creation.

Resources: Interesting Example, Guide

***Not-Recommended***
Greyhat and Blackhat Money Makers

9. E-Whoring

What: E-whoring is the technique of using social networking sites to lure/trick users into signing up for things like dating sites or porn sites. With the explosion of Myspace, Facebook, and other social networking portals, E-whoring became very popular and very successful. The technique generally involves creating fake profiles that funnel profile viewers to landing pages or other forms of monetization (usually other dating sites or porn sites that pay per signup).

Tips: There has been a lot of saturation in this monetization method, but for creative folks out there, the market is still wide open. It’s best to think of E-whoring as a study in social engineering. Getting eyeballs isn’t a problem, its convincing them you are legit, and walking them through to completing a sale or signup that is the tricky part. Again, niche communities are easier to be profitable in than mainstream ones. Make sure the affiliate programs you use are liberal with what they allow, as some would ban you for this method.

Resources: More Info, Forum

10. Outsourcing Arbitrage

What: In the past 5 years or so many freelance work sites have cropped up with workers from all over the globe. By posting jobs on these sites, workers bid on your work, often times for VERY affordable prices. With so many different freelance sites, workers, and work available, this is a wide open market for a technique called outsourcing arbitrage. This type of arbitrage, similar to PPC arbitrage, takes advantage of price discrepancies. The goal with outsourcing arbitrage is to win contracts for work, and then re-outsource the work for that contract at a lower pay rate than what you are getting. This can be done with almost any type of work from content writing, to programing, to marketing.

Tips:Those making the most money doing outsourcing arbitrage are the ones who have spent the time to build good relationships with those they re-outsource work to. Finding a competent writer, programmer, or graphic artist for a rock bottom rate can be time consuming (Thailand and Singapore are great places to start your search.)

Resources:elance.com, rentacoder.com, scriptlance.com, crowdspring.com, 99designs.com, odesk.com, guru.com, freelancswitch.com, getafreelancer.com

11. Cookie Stuffing (**Will Likely Become Illegal)

What: Affiliate sales are almost always tracked via cookies. Cookie stuffing is the practice of covertly placing an affiliate cookie on a visitors computer without their knowledge with the intention of getting credit for any sales placed by that visitor. An example would be using a highly trafficked page and cookie stuffing all the visitors with your amazon.com affiliate cookie. Each visitor who then went on to later purchase from amazon.com would look like they had been referred by you, giving you a commission on whatever they purchased. While not yet illegal (but certainly not right, and possibly criminal), cookie stuffing is rampant.

Tips:Nearly all affiliate programs explicitly prohibit cookie stuffing in their Terms of Service. If you are caught doing it, it’s likely you will be kicked out of the affiliate program. Small private affiliate companies are worse at detecting fraud than large ones.

Resources:More Info

12. AutoBlog Empires

What: Autoblogging is a technique where you automate blog creation and content generation in an effort to earn money through adsense or similar monotization methods.  Successful autobloggers own “empires” of thousands of blogs that target a wide swath of niches and keywords.

Tips:If you plan on trying this, do so on a completely different server than any whitehat sites you own. Being banned from Google is a risk autobloggers must accept.
Resources:
Autoblogs == $$$
(12 pages of threaded discussion. Some really basic information on the working of autoblogs)

Ultimate Collection of Autoblog Plugins
(Almost every WP plugin has been discussed in concise details in this thread)

How To Replicate Techchuck AutoBlog
(Techchuck.com – one of the decent example of autoblogging. Learn how you can make the same kind of autoblog.

Auto Blogs on CRACKS
(A thourough guide and the first guide you should read, on building autoblogs. Really cool.)

Another Blogs on HomeMade Crack
(A really descriptive guide on a method based on autoblogs. Hats off the OP. Filled with really nice discussions on Autoblogging and Money.)

Step By Step Autoblog Setup
(Building autoblogs can never be easier than this. A totally spoon feeding, spoiling post)
Living the Dream with AutoBlogs
(Success story and guide)
Bluehatseo.com guide
(Success story and guide)

In the field of search marketing, there are a ton of different areas where skill proficiency is a must.  If you are new to the arena, back from a hiatus or just need something to help you focus on one area at a time, I have something for you.  I use a short and simple equation that organizes all of the search marketing tasks into different groups.

Here she is:

Research + SEO + Link Building = High Search Rankings

Seems like a elementary equation to represent such complex tasks and systems but I assure you, it will help when you need a frame of reference or you get lost in the weeds.  As always, the better you become in each area of the equation the better results you’ll achieve.

Part One: Research

The most overlooked area of search marketing is in my opinion, the planning and research necessary to the success of any website online.  You should be engaging in keyword research, niche analysis and competitive analysis before you construct your plan of attack or develop any target keyword spreadsheets.

• Analyze keyword difficulty
• Analyze the competitors that currently rank for the keywords you want
• Compile a comprehensive keyword list with at least a metric for keyword difficulty
• Develop your SEO plan of action

Part Two: Search Engine Optimization

Of course, before you decide how the website will be optimized, you’ve got to have a firm grasp on which keywords are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Obviously, you should scoop up the keywords that are easiest and put in solid consistent effort in improving your rankings for more difficult long term keyword goals.

Before you build your first link, write your first blog post, submit to digg.com or tell a friend about your website, you must:

• Create unique page titles
• Create unique meta data/information
• Create unique urls using mod-rewrite or something similar
• Fix any canonicalization issues
• Check site-wide architecture and make sure the infrastructure is in tact with no server error pages
• Make sure unique content is on every page
• Don’t ever serve two pages with the same content

If you can’t master the aforementioned tasks, don’t tell anybody until you can.

Part Three: Link Building

So, you want to get your website fully indexed by the search engines and you know you’ve got to get some juicy inbound links to it.  Sorry guys, ultimately, if you suck at link building, you’re going to have an impossible time getting the rankings you/your client is looking for. If you’re giving it a shot anyway, here are a few popular ways to accomplish this task!

• Manual Link Building (slow): this usually consists of contacting website owners and convincing them to put a link on their website that links to yours.  This is totally cool for the more popular websites whose link would benefit your rankings greatly but don’t just go contacting any old Joe with a PR1 blogger blog for a link.

• Blog Writing (slow/medium): One of the best ways to build links to your domain is to create an active blog that offers content to an eventual community of users.  The topics can usually be directly or tangentially related to your company/product.  The con here is that creating a successful blog takes time, creativity and patience which a lot of us don’ t have.  If you can weather the storm, the pro of keeping a successful blog severly outweighs the con with thousands of visitors per day becoming the “talkers” for your company often linking your site to others and spreading offline word of mouth as well.

• Social Media Marketing (fast): If you engage in social media marketing correctly, this can turn into a link-building powerhouse for you.  By far, the most difficult part of this process is creating link-worthy content and refining your promotional skills, two activities that even “web 2.0” experts struggle with.

There are many more link-building examples that could work for you, check out some examples over at SEO BOOK.

Remember when optimizing your website and campaigns, you’ll want to make sure you’re using analytics data to make decisions about which tactics work and which ones do not.  The power of the search marketing equation should get stronger and stronger over time.

Note: this is by no means the end to the work done in search marketing, but it does illustrate in a quasi-mathematical way, what areas you must focus on for success with your website.

-Nicholas Santillo

Universal Social Media Lessons

1. The playing field is level: This is true in the fact that the internet is a place where anyone can publish content.   If anyone can publish, anyone can create a successful internet meme or campaign.  Can anyone create the ideas behind the campaigns with a high success rate?  This is less than likely and where the amateurs of social social media get left in the dust.   Social media experts and web 2.0 agencies are in fact, held responsible for creating content that fits the culture of a specific community. The goal is to create content that marries the brand with what the community finds valuable.  This takes constant involvement in those communities and trend research to be able to use those communities to your advantage, time after time.

2. Social Media Submissions Cost $0
The actual cost of submitting content to a social community such as reddit.com, digg.com, stumble-upon, etc.. is indeed $0.  Perhaps the only cost associated with social media marketing is the cost of content development and production.  Its possible that your brand is a PR dream however, in most cases its not, within this gap there are many web 2.0/social media firms around to help you properly utilize social media for your business.

3. Be Genuine/Write Original Content
Writing original content is the backbone of everything on the internet. You should never inflate, lie or copy others work and claim it as your own. There are many negative SEO implications for copying content that comes from somewhere else and not to mention ethical problems associated with it too. The internet is for producing and reading original, interesting (and sometimes not so interesting) content. No posers allowed.

4. Lose Control
For those bigger corporations, losing control is probably the scariest thing one could say to you but for social media, you really have no choice. With the proper planning and campaign strategy, you can lose control positively. There will always be opposition to your brand but as long as the positive comments and sharing outweigh the negative, the word of mouth alone will go a long way.  Word of mouth alone can make or break your brand, product or even business so using social media wisely key for any business.

If you were on Facebook last January, you no doubt saw, or even participated in a meme that swept across the social networking site like wild fire. The meme was basically a survey with rules as follows.

“Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If i tagged you, its because I want to know more about you. “

This simple concept became one of the most viral memes ever on Facebook, with very direct impacts on their traffic and user participation. Compete.com data shows that nearly 4 times the more people visited the “notes” section (the section utilized for the 25 things meme) on Facebook in January than the previous. This reached a high of 20million in January vs 4 million in October 2008. In addition to this, Facebook itself saw 15% overall growth in January, with 60% more profiles created in January than December. You can see the increases in general traffic, and the notes section reflected in the graph below. The meme eventually became so popular, it garnered mention in the mainstream news. Thanks to readwriteweb for the image and analysis.

Notable Features of the Viral

1. Specific rules for sharing: The rules mandate sharing with at least 25 other individuals. This is a HUGE reason why this particular meme took off and became so viral. By requiring tagging of others, this meme accelerated exponentially.

2. Appeal to vanity: Telling others about yourself appeals to vanity, given an excuse such as a meme that “everyone is doing” give people a chance to talk about themselves that they normally wouldn’t be able to discuss. This helped to make each participant in the viral meme feel a sense of ownership in it, adding to their desire to share.

3. Appeal to learning inside scoops: The nature of the viral was to share information other people didn’t know. This made the meme interesting to both participants and readers. This meant that even those who did not write a “25 things” p0st themselves, still acted as spreaders for the meme in that they talked about it with others both on and offline.

2. FakeBait – The Viral Lie

In May 2008, marketer Lyndon Antcliff, wrote a sensationalized and fictional article for his client money.co.uk. titled “13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers”. The story became popular on digg and was then picked up by mainstream news sources including News.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, and Fox News. The fake news bait resulted in over 2,200 links for his client. Even more exposure came when Lyndon exposed the article as a fake, gaining hundreds of links from reputable marketing blogs across the internet.

If looked at in terms of viral success, this was no-doubt a blockbuster, however there is more to consider here than simply the number of links that were built. This case should be seen as a both an interesting example, and a warning to those who might consider a similar viral strategy. Using a lie can result in a good deal of negative press, so one must be understanding of that risk, and asses negative publicity as part of the equation.

Notable Features of the Viral

1. Lies can make great Virals: The caveat to this is that they can damage a brand and its credibility. There are however instances where this might not matter, or strategies for dissociating the brand from the lie.

2. Sensational outrageous stories coming from legitimate sources result in viral success. The weirder or more bizarre, the better.

3. Viral success isn’t your only goal, if its a detriment to the brand, forget it.

3. Mappos – Viral Mashups

Mappos is a real-time google maps mashup that shows people buying shoes from the Zappos.com website in real time. As each customer buys a pair of shoes, that shoe pops up to the location corresponding to the buyers IP address. You can then click on the shoe and buy it! There is also additional functionality for voting for shoes you like, which gives users additional incentive to participate. While this particular example has yet to be a viral blockbuster, I felt it was worthy of mention for several reasons:

Notable Features of the Viral

1. Good viral content allows viewers to relate to a product in an interesting way (even when its something mundane like shoes) . This sort of mashup illustrates the sort of thinking that result in viral content that spreads the word not only about the content itself, but about the business/brand as well.

2. Good viral content can convey additional value of a product. This particular case demonstrates popularity. Only a popular site like Zappos could make an application like this, because only Zappos has the traffic and customers to make it work.

4. Blendtec

Blendtec is a company that makes high powered blenders. They are responsible for the “Will it Blend?” series of viral videos that began in 2006 and continue today. The premise of the virals is to take everyday objects and see what happens when you put them in a Blendtec blender. Things they have blended include: a rake handle, marbles, an Iphone 3G, Glowsticks, Cubic Zirconium, Hockey Pucks, Golf Balls, and many other items.

As of June 21, 2009, the Blendtec series of videos had collected a total of 83,238,033 views (an average of 967,884 views per video) on YouTube. The viral videos became so popular, Tom Dickson, the companies founder and star of the videos, found his way onto television several times including a feature on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 2007, Blendtec announced that their viral marketing campaigns with the “Will it Blend?” series had improved sales numbers by a staggering 500%.

Notable Features of the Viral

1. The viral succeeded in being interesting, and at the same time demonstrating value of the product. If you’re goal is to build brand awareness through a viral, it is necessary to make sure you’re viral marketing idea somehow conveys the benefits of your product. Blendtec does this spectacularly by showing the durability and strength of their product in a very interesting, and viral way.

2. Packaging is important to legitimacy. If you watch the “Will it Blend?” series, you will notice the care that went into the videos, the professional quality, the set, and the overall production value. This is an important element. In many cases the presentation is almost as important as the content. Presenting something professional and pleasing to the eye encourages sharing, and adds value and legitimacy to both the product and the viral content.

5. AVirginsPlea.com

I wanted to mention this particular viral because its really a combination of three that have already been mentioned (Savetoby.com and Ex-Girlfriend Revenge, Viral Hoax). The site was set up with the premise that if 5 million visitors came to AVirginsPlea.com in 30 days, a girl had agreed to sleep with the sites owner. That back story included the fib that the author was a virgin whose fiancee cheated on him six months before their wedding, ruining the next three years of his dating life.

The hoax took off and Matthew Gamble, the creator of the site, did more than 20 interviews with news programs before finally being exposed as a fraud. The viral had no monetary goal, and was not used for the viral promotion of a product or service, but is still interesting as a concept for virility.

Notable Features of the Viral

Matthew Gamble commented that the idea “worked too well”. In my opinion, this is because it included several elements that had proved successful before. These include:

1. Telling an outrageous story that people find share-worthy.

2. Giving readers a scenario they can empathize with.

3. Giving readers an incentive to share (in this case sex, but also altruism)

4. Definitive goals to reach (5 Million Visitors)

5. A Time Limit (30 Days)

]]> http://voltier.com/2009/12/5-more-unique-viral-blockbusters-we-can-learn-from/feed/ 8 http://voltier.com/2009/12/e-culture-hubs-places-all-internet-marketers-should-understand/ http://voltier.com/2009/12/e-culture-hubs-places-all-internet-marketers-should-understand/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:26:54 +0000 admin http://voltier.com/?p=442 The Cool Kids

Sometimes I like to think about the Internet as one big high school. A high school that has every imaginable clique or type of group, from the nerds, to jocks, to stoners, to cheer leaders, to political enthusiasts, to goths… Each of these groups comes with a certain amount of social pull, a level of ability to sway general perceptions and spread ideas. In a real high school, the group of students with the most influence are usually known as “the cool kids.”

Online, the cool kids are not the jocks or the cheerleaders the, they are actually the geeks, nerds, and techies.  They are the people who live and breath the Internet, who contribute to the creation and spread of content, ideas, and culture.

If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwells book “The Tipping Point” these Internet “Cool Kids” are considered CONNECTORS.  Individuals with large social networks, motivation for sharing amongst each other, and producers of content. Gladwell states in his book that

“The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.”

I call them the “cool kids” , Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz called them “Linkerati.”  They are bloggers, forum posters, web news writers, content creators, viral connectors, and journalist, but most of all, simply VERY active participants.

For the cool kids, the 80/20 Principle applies. 80 percent of the work (spreading of ideas online) is done by 20 percent of the participants (the cool kids).

Where the Cool Kids Hang Out

So where does this 20%, these “cool kids”, the “Connectors”, hang out?  Well,  everywhere, but there are several “Hubs” where they all come to compare notes. It’s in these hubs where the real magic happens, where the power of the “Cool Kids” is shown.  It is where Internet Culture is dictated, it is where memes are born, and learning to influence it is the holy grail of all those looking to spread viral content and gain notoriety. The following are the places you should know and understand  as a good Internet Marketer.

1. Social News Sites

Reddit

Reddit is a social news site where users submit content (articles, images, videos, comments, etc.) and the submissions are ranked by popularity based on the total number of votes given to the content. The largest demographic on reddit are males between the ages of 18-35. Topics redditors care about include: atheism, marijuana legalization, science/technology, programming, net neutrality, Jon Stewart, gay rights, and hating Glenn Beck.

Digg

Digg is similar to reddit but somewhat more popular. It’s demographics are similar to reddit but tend to be more moderate and more focused on gaming/news/and pop culture. There are what are called “power users” on digg who have high success rates with promoting content to the front page of the site where it is seen by millions.

2. Forums

Something Awful Forum

Something awful is a very large paid forum. Members have developed a unique community with its own specific subculture. In many ways it is similar to 4chan in that it’s main visitors are young males with raunchy/gross out type senses of humor. Many memes have originated there including “all your base are belong to us” and goatse.ce.

IGN Forum

IGN forum is the companion forum to IGN.com, one of the largest gaming sites on the Internet with over 6 million unique visitors per month. The demographics of the forum are similar to the site itself, mostly young males. Content on the forums is similar to what you will find at 4chan or Something Awful consisting of picture posts, offbeat news, contests, pop culture, geek culture, gaming talk, hot chicks talk, and obscure Internet references/memes.

3. Chan’s

4chan

4chan.com is the web’s most popular image board. It was created in 2003 by a 15 year old from NYC who called himself “moot”. Before starting 4chan, moot was an avid somethingawful forum member. The boards started as primarily a place to discuss anime and manga, but has since become a hub of Internet culture that has been responsible for starting and spreading TONS of viral content and spawning dozens of memes.

4chans’s most popular board is /b/ which allows “random” content to posted. 4chan is 100% anonymous, which has led to a sense of anarchy among members, an anything goes attitude and sensibility. The /b/ section is now a wasteland of bizarre content full of nudity, shock content, memes, and “funny content”. The humor of /b/’s many users, who refer to themselves as “/b/tards” is often incomprehensible to newcomers and outsiders, and is characterized by intricate inside jokes and black comedy.

4chan, and the /b/ board in particular are responsible for the following virals/memes: Rickrolling, Chocolate Rain, Chuck Norris Love, the words “Lulz, epic fail/win, zomg” and many others, ffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, Over 9,000, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, an hero, pedobear, Lolcats (this meme spawned icanhascheeseburger.com, which sees more than 1,000,000 unique visitors per month. It was sold recently for $2,000,000) and dozens of others.

Conclusions

Understanding each of these communities can help you gain at least a top level understanding of popular Internet subculture among those most responsible for influencing others online. The communities mentioned, in addition to several others listed below, are an underground driving force in what is and what will be popular online. Their effects are seen across the Internet, and by understanding the trends starting in these communities, you can often find great opportunity to use these trends to your advantage, to piggyback your own viral content on a growing meme.

Additional Places You Should Understand/Know About:

1. Fark.com

2. YTMND.com

3. Facebook/Myspace/Twitter (You should already be intimately familiar with these)

4. Gaiaonline.com

5. Bodybuilding.com

6. Ebaumsworld.com

Please feel free to comment on additional places you feel are hubs of Internet Culture.

Here’s an exercise: picture yourself when you first started search marketing and the level of knowledge you had.  Got it?  Now picture your old self as a current prospect.  Isn’t that image scary?  Where do you even begin?  I usually start with day one of the internet.  No really, I give it to them straight up old school, considering the average persons understanding of how the internet works is stuck back in the 90’s with altavista and meta tagging, so, if you want to hook them, you’ve got to start there.  If you can keep them interested all the way to 2009, you’ve got a shot at a healthy relationship.   Its important that you feel out the level of understanding your prospect has about the search engine marketing before attempting to connect the dots.  So, during that process be aware of these misconceptions that you’ll undoubtedly run into. You can choose to run for the hills or expect to ramp up your communications, leaving no gap in knowledge or room for misunderstanding.

Myth Numero Uno: “My Domain Came SEO Optimized”

First of all, SEO can’t possibly come with your domain.  A single domain with no pages or content is only as good as its name, there is nothing else to be “SEO’d.”  That said, picking a name is extremely important, because, in our world, you’re stuck with it.   You can’t decide that on one random day that you’d prefer another domain and just change your name and that’s that.   To avoid a giant seo nightmare, when you’re planning your concept, leave the name for last… right before you develop the site.

Myth Numero Dos: “I was Told Flash is the Best Type of Website… and I Want it”

Flash is so pretty.  I love flash.  My website won’t work without flash.   I can’t achieve the same objectives without flash. SEO websites are ugly, mine is flash based. I know the secret to ranking an entirely flash based website.

I have heard all of these comments. Let’s set the record straight, flash allows you to do some pretty awesome things from a design/user experience basis but for SEO, it’s still useless garbage. So, what we usually go for if the client is hellbent on flash movies and loading bars is to seamlessly integrate the two.

Having a website whose infrastructure is built with solid html, thousands of indexable pages with dynamic content and tastefully created flash movies is the perfect combination of glitz, glam and pragmatic design.  Your customers will be pleasantly surprised and so will the search engines.

Myth Numero Tres: “You Can Achieve #1 Position by Injecting Some Tags and/or Submitting to Google”

Meta tags are SO TIRED AND OLD.  I mean, yes, all websites should have them just so when a client looks at your source code, meta tags exist, then your client will immediately assume that you’ve must be doing something right.  Thats about all they’re good for nowadays.  The days of SEO being a quick index.html file open, find/replace, use of permutation tools is over (unless you’re doing some PPC). There are literally hundreds of more important factors than how many meta tags you’ve got shoved in.

My buddy knows someone who can submit my website to the top of Google.

Yeah? What does that even mean? Where do you go to submit your site? Is that like the DMV where you go to register your car? Do they take credit cards?

The odd thing is that there are others within this industry that make money by convincing ill-informed people with money to pay them in exchange for submitting their website to the top of google. Lies.

Build an awesome website that is compliant with 100’s of SEO rules of thumb (which change often) + Build 1000’s of quality in-bound links = a start to a successful website.

After you can master that equation, we move onto calculus and testing.  Its not an exact science, every website is different and operates in a niche with unique limits/obstacles but getting your website to the top has nothing to do with contacting google. In fact, they contact you. robots.txt

Myth Numero Quatro:  Anything Worthwhile Usually Takes More Than a Day to Build. Rome did. Your Successful Website Will Too.

Just like there is no Google submission committee where you’re website is denied or approved, there is no such thing as overnight results in the seo/sem world.  If you’re looking for that, PPC is your way to go and in some cases, a great way to test your longer term SEO efforts and keyword targeting.

In fact, the process of working on a search marketing project should be a long term, healthy relationship based on a slow to moderate rise in rankings, traffic and sales.  Depending on the talents of the SEO firm, this may take 2-3 months or 2-3 years based on the strategy they execute and the tools they deploy.  What is strange to me is that its common in the SEO world, despite the better judgement of any mildly successful SEO to oversell and under-deliver.   Logically, if you tell someone to expect a filet and give them ground beef, they’re going to be unhappy.  Be sure to educate your prospect on what to expect, how long they will have to wait for gratification and why it takes so long to achieve the outlined results. Or, if you like being dropped like a fly- show ‘em a filet.

Myth Numero Cinco: “Rankings are Permanent”

There is nothing permanent about the search engines besides fluctuation in the SERP’s and the need for a stellar SEO team to make sure your website is growing at a rate faster than anyone else in that niche.  The goal is to become competitive and continue the rate of progression so that no other website can catch up.  Sounds easy, right?   Some niches are easier than others.  If you’re just starting, make sure your research is done meticulously well and the pro’s outweigh the con’s.

Myth Numero Seis: “Ranking Number One for One Keyword is an Actual Search Strategy”

“I want to rank number-one for cleaning.”  Sure you do.  But why not expand your horizons and realize that while ranking number one for cleaning, if achieved, is probably only a fraction of the relevant traffic on the internet looking for what you’re offering.   The process of getting your website to rank for 10000 tangentially related keywords (long tail) vs. “cleaning” would consist of an inherently different strategy and would need to be planned from the get-go.  Again, I can’t stress the words “Keyword Research” enough here.

Myth Numero Siete: “My Sister is a Social Media Expert”

And my poodle is a brain surgeon.  The hot marketing buzz word right now is SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.  Just because you poke your girlfriend on facebook or retweet her useless comments of the day, does not mean that you know social media marketing. Knowing how to operate an account and leveraging an entire network of people for the benefit of a single user are two different things and the latter takes a skill that can’t be created overnight and should be taken much more seriously than most people do.

Lets start with the uber official wikipedia definition of what social media marketing is.

“Social media marketing is a term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service.”

So, when your client asks for more sales, and you tell them you’re going to use social media marketing as a way to make that happen, what are you actually saying?  You have got to be clear as day. You’re going to create 30 viral youtube videos that drive X amount of traffic resulting in X amount of links, bringing your rankings up 20 spot and sales up by 400%? Or, are you going to use a power tweet account to build brand recognition and quality links to internally produced content and other media?   With the almost perpetual advent of new social networks with popularity increasing on some and decreasing on others, where should you bring your clients website to be social?  A celebrity blog on reedit? Probably not. A techno-nerd blog on digg? If the content marries the social characteristics of the community, then give it a go.  If not, search for a more targeted venue.

Myth Numero Ocho: “Buying Non-Unique Content or Copying Content From Article Databases is Smart”

A successful blog can do wonders for a business online.   But its got to be original, unique to your website and consistent.  Blogging can do two very important things for your website and business, the first being an instant way to communicate with your constituents, customers, vendors, investor or anyone who has a stake/interest in what your business does.   These people can begin to or even continue building a relationship with you without taking up a huge amount of time so in a sense, blogging is realtime public relations. Blogging can also have the power to build very relevant, fresh links that will help your site rise the rankings as your authority becomes stronger online.   So, no matter if you’re selling widgets or cupcakes, it’s always positive to keep a blog.

Myth Numero Nueve: “I’m going to cut long term costs by buying all of the necessary links.”

Like the millions of other people on the internet looking to cut corners and get rich quick, Google knows who you they are and if you engage in the activity, in that fashion, you will be found out too – and most likely penalized.  So, don’t do it. Build real, quality links to content that is worth while to the consumer and the search engine alike.

Myth Numero Diez: “I Have Someone Who Will Get my Website to #1 for $299″

Really? Thats Interesting.  You are buying into the rubbish that someone can get you valuable rankings in less than a days work?  They are either lying to you to get your business or you’re asking for your website to be ranked for weak terms in a non-competitive niche. The truth of the matter is that no matter the source, the volume of work in getting anything ranked number one for nearly any term can’t be done for that rate. Read the fine print, check their references and ask questions if you don’t understand the proposal.

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Article Title: “15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started as an Internet Marketer”

Summary: Chris Tynski outlined the challenges, solutions, trials and tribulations that most internet marketers are faced with when they enter into the online marketing arena.  From choosing an appropriate online business model to choosing a correct method to scale your knowledge and accomplish more work per hour.  This article is a great read with some general advice to those of you who are new to our community.

Traction: 20 Marketing Pilgrim Comments, 197 Tweets, 1149 Dosh Dosh Hits (30 Days), Finalist in the Annual Marketing Pilgrim Contest

Article Title: “How to Get Strong Referral Traffic from Social Websites: A Simple Link-bait Tactic”

Summary: If your website serves content for an audience that does not particularly align well with the culture or interests of a specific social networking community, this article offers some pragmatic advice for benefiting from those communities. Perhaps the way to go is to research tangential topics to write about, promote those now appropriate topics on your target social media outlets and watch the links pile up. Discretion and selection is key to your success with this method.

Traction: 19 Dosh Dosh Comments

Noteworthy Commentors: Andy Beal, Chris Winfield

Article Title: “The 7 Deadly Sins that Hurt You as an SEO or SEM”

Summary: Daniel Tynski wrote an article about the potential pitfalls a new internet marketer could face and how to avoid getting bogged down by ambiguity and tangents.  Gain confidence quickly, don’t trust too many people and test your hypothesis ad nauseam.

Traction: 20 Marketing Pilgrim Comments

Article Title: “Anatomy of a Super Digg”

Summary: We we’re contracted to work with a local used card dealership here in West Palm Beach, FL and they wanted to experiment of Social Media Marketing.  We got some ideas together and executed them primarily using digg.com – the community of choice.  Daniel recounts his experience and results of the content being promoted using our internal Social Media Marketing methods.

Traction: 73 SEO MOZ comments, Promotion to the main Seomoz.org blog from YouMoz

Noteworthy Commentors: Rand Fishkin (CEO of SeoMoz.org) made a special note that said:

Note from Rand – Daniel’s site, Voltier, was taken down by an insane traffic load from Digg, Reddit, & others today (which is why the hosted images above aren’t displaying). Given time, I have no doubt they’ll recover – many congrats for putting together some great linkbait, and better luck holding together the server next time; it’s certainly an issue we at SEOmoz can empathize with.

Article Title: “A Comprehensive Guide to Going Viral on Digg (part 1)” & “A Comprehensive Guide to Going Viral on Digg (part 2)”

Summary: If you have been charged with the necessary task of generating high quality links for your website and you want to get the biggest bang for your buck, Social Media Marketing may be your best choice.  Just to scratch the surface on how to get something that you wrote to go popular on a website like digg, read more.

Traction: 19 SEO MOZ comments, Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007 (Tamar Weinberg/Techipedia.com)

Noteworthy Commentors: Sugar Rae, Rebecca Kelley

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Nunc a velit a enim sodales ullamcorper et nec neque. Nullam sit amet pellentesque elit. Morbi laoreet justo quis dui faucibus semper. Praesent condimentum semper faucibus. Maecenas ut nibh elit. Pellentesque adipiscing varius sagittis. Donec nec elit at mi ornare gravida. Nunc fermentum aliquet mattis. Nulla eget ligula diam. Nullam semper nunc venenatis libero placerat pulvinar.

Nulla enim elit, commodo ac accumsan eu, condimentum tempor purus. Praesent ultricies commodo sem, sit amet mattis dui rutrum vitae. Proin suscipit accumsan malesuada. Etiam vel ultrices tellus. Donec varius ullamcorper erat eget dignissim. Ut sagittis, ipsum eget vulputate posuere, nulla augue semper nunc, eget tristique velit sapien quis est. Morbi consequat, lectus ac elementum auctor, mi nisl venenatis libero, sit amet commodo nulla justo vitae odio.
Donec varius ullamcorper erat eget dignissim

Nunc a velit a enim sodales ullamcorper et nec neque. Nullam sit amet pellentesque elit. Morbi laoreet justo quis dui faucibus semper. Praesent condimentum semper faucibus. Maecenas ut nibh elit. Pellentesque adipiscing varius sagittis. Donec nec elit at mi ornare gravida. Nunc fermentum aliquet mattis. Nulla eget ligula diam. Nullam semper nunc venenatis libero placerat pulvinar.

Nulla enim elit, commodo ac accumsan eu, condimentum tempor purus. Praesent ultricies commodo sem, sit amet mattis dui rutrum vitae. Proin suscipit accumsan malesuada. Etiam vel ultrices tellus.