WidgetBucks - New PPC for bloggers

Introducing new Pay-Per-Click (PPC) site for bloggers - WidgetBucks, a new advertising network of shopping trend widgets. For every click on the widget, the publisher will get paid. Beside the PPC, publishers can also earn some extra income through its referral program.

It is easy to set up the WidgetBucks in the blog or website.
1. Sign up and earn with WidgetBucks
2. Configure the widget with its publishing system.
3. Paste the code in your blog.

The widget integrates with most of the major blogging platforms such as Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and MovableType.

Currently there are 5 ads formats namely the Skyscraper 160x600, Rectangle 300x250, Leaderboard 728x90, Full Banner 468x60 and Custom 660x330. Publisher can also choose a name for the widget too. You can notice the heading on the image captured on the left with the My E-Commerce title.

For a start, new user who sign up will be automatically receive a USD$25 bonus into his/her account. Check will be sent out on the 1st of each month for all revenue earned during the previous month, provided it has reach the minimum USD$50. I did saw the payment option of PayPal being provided in the account setting.

What I like about the widget is its dynamic ads or animation and the variety of products images and information. You can choose the category of the products or just let the MerchSense crawls your page and finds relevant products to include in your widgets.

Get Paid to Blog

Fancy getting paid to blog on some topics that you are interested in? Well, you can consider Smorty, a blog advertising site that provide its members the opportunity to blog and earn money at the same time.

Advertisers will put up advertising campaigns with Smorty. Registered member are required to choose the campaign that they are interested in the personal admin panel or check their mail regularly. Once the campaign has been selected, opinion articles are to be wrote for the campaign based on the requirements set by the advertisers. Some of these requirements are such as putting up one or two specific anchor text and link within the post to link back to the advertisers website, minimum number of words (it would be around 50, 100, 150 or up to 300 words) and the tone of the article.

At the end, upon approval, payment will be made on weekly basis to your PayPal account. This is how Smorty work to connect the advertisers with the bloggers. Spending few minutes to write a blog post and getting paid in return itself is indeed a good news that I believe worth to be shared with my friends.

Six Types of Corporate Blogs

As discussed in the previous entry on Corporate Blogging, there are 2 major categories of corporate blogs namely Internal Blogs and External Blogs.

Fredrik Wackå in his www.corporateblogging.info has wrote the following 6 types of corporate blogs. Sales, Relationship and Branding blogs are part of the External Blogs and Knowledge, Collaboration and Cultural blogs are forming the Internal Blogs.

He further explained the purpose, blogger and the target groups for each of the blog types.

Six Types of Corporate Blogs

Corporate (or Business, Organisational) blogs can be classified into six different categories. Each category shares common characteristics and the blog content can be expected to differ between the categories.

Furthermore, there are differences in terms of target groups and purposes. Even if we also see hybrid forms where blogs are examples of more than one category, an organisation that professionally incorporates blogging into its communications strategy will likely prioritize one purpose (for each blog).

Sales blogs - external
Purpose: To market or sell products/services, make citizens aware of public services, get donations for charities or political parties etc.
Blogger: The organisation itself, or more specifically individuals within it writing on behalf of the organisation.
Target groups: (Potential) clients/customers and citizens, that is persons and/or other organisations that are directly involved with the publishing organisation, or those it wants to reach with the purpose above.

Relationship blogs - external
Purpose: To create, uphold or strengthen relationships.
Blogger: The organisation itself, or more specifically individuals within it writing on behalf of the organisation.
Target groups: Often smaller and more specified than with sales blogs. Examples are support blogs aimed at customers of a certain product, finance blogs for IR purposes, PR blogs for media, blogs trying to reach students, future employees, politicians/officials etc.

Branding blogs - external
Purpose: To strengthen the brand, the profile, of the publishing organisation or individuals within it.
Blogger: Not necessarily the organisation itself. Individual employees’ or executives’ blogging ("insider blogs"), if supported by the organisation, can be viewed as a branding blog. The same goes for adverblogs and blogs that are not apparently connected to the organisation.
Target groups: See Relationship and Sales blogs.

Knowledge blogs - internal
Purpose: To give employees information and insights relating to their work assignments; news, business intelligence, reports about ongoing projects etc.
Blogger: The organisation itself through one or more designated bloggers, or potentially all employees through a entirely open blog publishing model.
Target groups: All employees with a certain interest.

Collaboration blogs - internal
Purpose: To provide a working team with a tool for research, collaboration and discussion.
Blogger: The team.
Target group: The team.
(There’s only a fine line - if any - between this blog category and business wiki’s. You could also see for example Relationship Blogs change into more wiki-like publications.)

Culture blogs - internal
Purpose: To strengthen organisational culture. Typically through informal content of social or non-work related character.
Blogger: The organisation itself through one or more designated bloggers, or potentially all employees through a entirely open blog publishing model.
Target groups: All employees as employees, and not as professionals (developers, managers, assistants and so on).

(As part of the copyright requirement by Fredrik, no amendment has been made to the original content.)

Corporate Blogging: New Marketing Communication Tool

In recent years, the blogging environment is no longer exclusively restricted for individual or personal. Corporate has been actively pursuing a more business-like blogs for their marketing as well as organizational purposes.

As at June 17, 2007, there are currently 132 organisations has their corporate blogs. Among the big names include Accenture, Boeing, General Motors, Google, HP, Sun Microsystems and a lot more. A complete list can be obtained from The NewPR/Wiki. 40 (8%) of the Fortune 500 are blogging.

Corporate weblogs are used to reach its organisational goals. There are 2 major categories of corporate blogs namely internal blogs and external blogs.

Internal blogs – accessed through the corporation’s intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. The informal nature of the blogs may encourage employee participation, free discussion of issues, collective intelligence, direct communication between various layers of an organization and a sense of community. It is mainly used as a tool for collaboration and knowledge management.

External blogs – publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokepersons share their views. Main purposes include new product announcement, policies clarifications as well as being an informal press release of the organisation’s activities. The informality and increased timeliness of information posted to blogs assists with increasing transparency and accessibility in the corporate image.

Sun Microsystems Inc CEO, Jonathan Schwartz was one of the pioneers from Fortune 500 CEOs to start blogging and currently his blogging enthusiasm is being shared by 3,500 of his employees who have their own blogs. Jonathan’s blog helps to improve communication and attracting new customers. He also blog about life as a CEO and discuss new products online. His blog attracts approximately 60,000 readers on a good day.

These are a few useful resources on corporate blogging available from the Internet:
1. The CorporateBlogging.Info
2. The Corporate Blogging Book on Squidoo
3. Best practices on corporate blogging from Singapore Entrepreneurs

Like this post?

How to get 500 links?

MoreMerchant.com has came out with a suggestion on how to get extra 500 links to your blog in order to boost up your Pagerank.

Method:
Take this list below and post it on your site adding your name to the bottom. Nothing new here. Just a link list that is like chain mail.

-------------------------------------------
Step 1:

Start highlighting here
Derek Semmler
Make more Money and Save more Money
Cell Phones
John Chow
Binding Machines
Windshield replacement
Problogger
Music Reviews
My E-Commerce
Stop highlighting here

Step 2:
Paste the list on your blog post and recommend others do just the same. Add your link to the bottom and there you go. If you do this and 3 of your blog readers do this, and so forth, overnight you can well over 500 links to your site.

-------------------------------------------

Do you think this method will work? Based on the logical thinking, it may work if our readers did exactly as the 2 steps mentioned. In my opinion, I'm not sure whether it may or may not be working. Why not give it a try and see which direction that it will go. Anyway, this is an application of how viral marketing being used to promote a website or blog.

Google Adsense rounded corner ads

Beside the normal square corners available in the Google Adsense content ads, now two more options are available namely slightly rounded corners and very rounded corners.

Traditional square corners and Slightly rounded corners


Very rounded corners

Personally I prefer the slightly rounded corners as it looks more professional. Seems like Adsense ads is getting more professionally designed now. Currently I'm using borderless format as it blends with the background nicely.

Google adds 2 more new referral links

Google has added 2 more new products referrals for its publishers namely Google Apps (Communication and collaboration tools for businesses and organisations including Gmail and more) and Google Checkout (A faster, safer way to shop online).

Major applications for Google Apps includes Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Docs & Spreadsheets. If a customer signed up for Google Apps through your referral and use the account for more than 4 consecutive weeks, then you will be credited USD$5.00. Read the Google Apps explanation from the Google website. Tour and demos are also available here.

Google Checkout provide a fast, safe and convenient for online shopping. Basically using Google Search to find the merchants, with a single log-in, customers can buy from many stores that offer this services. (An article from Google Checkout blog - Find it with Google, Buy it with Google Checkout). The referral will receive USD $1.00 if the signed up customer completes a transaction of at least $10 within 90 days. (New buyers purchase). A short video tour of Google Checkout can be accessed here.

A sample of the Google Apps and Google Checkout banners can be seen at the sidebar.

Personal Notes:
Frankly, the design of the banners seem a bit plain and lack of colourful images. There only a few choices of banners being available for the time being.

These CPA (cost per acquisition/action) models may seem attractive but in my opinion, I'm more concern with the conversion rate. I'm afraid that it will be slow and tough time getting for the conversion to take place. How many of the customers are using Google Checkout to purchase things from the merchants? Just wait and see how its progress. Anyhow, its fun to know that there are new referral options provided by Google.

No more gambling advertisments on Google

Gambling sites such as casinos, bingo and poker were banned from Google UK's Google Adword advertising network all this while. Now you can add gambling sites such as non-cash games and gambling tutorials to this list.

Result from the search on this issue:

"Google has always prohibited the advertising of things like bingo, poker and online casinos. However having looked at this issue very carefully and considered the views of our users, we have decided to extend our policy.

We will no longer take ads for sites that promote gambling related content or gambling tutorials or whose primary purpose is `playing for fun', gambling or casino games of skill. While we respect people's differing views on gambling - and support freedom of expression - we believe that this new policy is simpler for everyone to understand and more in tune with users' wishes."

Advertlets.com - Asian Weblog Advertising Network

This is a weblog marketing network that should be participated by Malaysian bloggers as part of your online money making revenue model, besides being a new e-commerce business model. Advertlets.com is not just another Asian version ala Google Adsense. The simple yet catchy theme of advertisers + bloggers = money + happy indicates that there are more than just earning the money from this program. The community services provided is expanding from donation to charity. (Hopefully there will be more free trips, gifts, vouchers especially and gatherings in the future, hahaha).

There are 3 most important attraction of joining the advertlets namely local content, its hybrid polling and advertising feature, and getting paid in local currency. (Yes! in RM instead of USD).


Local content:
Most of the advertisments are designed with the local content. After all, majority of our readers are our friends. So obviously it would be more advantages for the local advertisers to grab this opportunity of the efficiency of targeted advertisment towards the local markets, particularly the local blog readers. Local contents enable the readers to conduct the transaction conveniently minus the worries of high shipping costs incurred besides faster delivery time.

Hybrid polling and advertising feature:
This innovative feature is definitely plus point with the ability for bloggers to make custom poll. The rotation feature is providing another new experience for readers. This enable the advertisers to come out with new e-commerce business model.


Paid in RM:
This is definitely something that I am looking forward to. As most of the advertisers would pay in USD, the payment in RM is very beneficial for local bloggers as no conversion rate is needed to be applied to the payment (with RM is getting stronger against the USD nowadays, we are getting less after the conversion). Another problem lurking on our local bloggers is the processing fees inposed by the banks in processing the foreign check. Different banks have different rates - some can be quite high where a big chunk of your payment will be disappeared. With local cheque, basically we are getting the nett of what we have earned.

That's sum up: Advertlets = More Money + Happy Blogging.

4 seconds - That is what I need ........

4 seconds - That's what I need to wait for a website to load.

I will stay if the website can be downloaded within 4 seconds. If it takes more than 4 seconds, I will leave. So, it is important for website designers and owners to ensure that their website can be downloaded within this time frame.

This is a finding disclosed in a recent survey conducted by Akamai.

• This is the outcome from 75% of the 1058 web shopper surveyed.
• 4 seconds is half of the previous surveyed time in the early days of online shopping.
• 30% of the respondents, beside leaving the website, will at the same time spread and share the negative experiences through viral marketing - words of mouth.

Reading link is available here - Websites face four-second cut-off (news.bbc.co.uk)

Pay-per-call in Internet Advertising

Familiar with pay-per-click?
It is a situation where advertisers pay when they receive a click.

How about pay-per-call?
Pay-per-call ads work in a similar way to pay-per-click ads, except that advertisers pay when they receive a phone call rather than a click.

Read this story on Pay-per-Call here.

Online Video Advertising Launched by Google

Google has taken the wraps off plans to sell video advertising online, an ambitious move that could unlock significant additional growth potential for the search giant.

Google said it was adding video ads to meet the needs of its advertisers, some of whom, such as movie studios, need a fully interactive experience to deliver their messages.

For more reading, click here.

This is a new online marketing tool that companies may consider in the near future.