Explode The Net » Internet Marketing

StomperNet Issue Update

Adam — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:12:17 +0000

Here is the status of my complaint with StomperNet for producing a product full of factual errors.

1: Stompernet has NOT responded to my email

2: I have since found additional factual errors

3: I have discovered that StomperNet is rated “F” with the Better Business Bureau.

4: I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, though I doubt it will do any good.

StomperNet’s Magazine, TheNetEffect, Is Full Of Factual Errors!

Adam — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:18:29 +0000

I was just looking through my latest issue of TheNetEffect from Andy Jenkins and the guys at StomperNet, and was disgusted to find multiple errors in one of the articles. I fired off the below email to Andy…we’ll see what response I get:

Andy,

I’m reading the article Up For Grabs! in the latest edition of The Net
Effect. I am quite shocked by the low quality of the article. This
article is full of factual errors. Here are 3 I’ve found:

1: Article states that Squidoo pays publishers 10% of revenue from
their content. That is wrong! Squidoo.com says “Any time someone stops
by your lens and buys a product you recommended or clicks on a Google
ad, you get 50% of the royalties.”

2: Article states that EzineArticles.com only allows 4 resource boxes,
and does not allow custom resource boxes for each article. That is
just false. I have over 1,000 articles published on EzineArticles.com
and they all have a unique resource box.

3: Article states that Hubpages nofollows links if you have more than
two links to the same site in a hub, or if you have less than 3
published hubs. Again, this is simply false. Nofollows are added based
on the Hubscore of the author and the hub. I have hubs with 3-4 links
to the same site, and they are not nofollowed.

I must say that I find this completely unacceptable for a marketing
publication that claims to be written by experts that are actually
doing what they teach. Where did this article come from? The author is
apparently not even using these social sites much, let alone an expert
in using the social sites, or he would not have including such factual
errors in the article.

If an article in your magazine has such inexcusable errors, how can I
trust anything in the magazine? How do I know that the other articles
are not just as misleading? I have already canceled my subscription
to the Net Effect and the DVD of the Month.

I would appreciate hearing your feedback and thoughts on this issue.

~Adam

I’ll post the response here, if I get one…for now, though, my respect for StomperNet just went down.

~Adam

Ask.com PPC No Longer Worthwhile?

Adam — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:15:12 +0000

Last year, I was getting great conversions from my Ask Sponsored Listings campaign – 2.63% conversion on average. This year, though, my conversion rate fell from 0.72% in January to 0.13% conversion in May. Conversion rate is practically 0% now.

What happened? I don’t know. What I do know is that Ask no longer seems capable of providing quality search traffic.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

Free Search Engine Marketing Tools

Adam — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:02:40 +0000

I decided to make a quick list of my favorite search engine marketing tools (for SEO or PPC) that are free and I use regularly. This way I’ll have the list for my own reference, and you can also benefit from it, too.

Free Keyword Research Tools

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Keyword Discovery Keyword Tool
Wordtracker Keyword Tool

Free PPC Management Tools
Adwords Wrapper – creates exact, phrase, and broad match keywords from a keyword list.

Backlink Tools
Reciprocal Link Checker – check to see if your link is present on a list of urls.

Have a favorite free tool? Tell me in a comment!

Content Infinity Review

Adam — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:20:27 +0000

If you haven’t already heard of Content Infinity, it’s the latest article generating software on the market. I decided to test it out and see if it could do what it claimed to do, namely:

“Powerful Article Writing Software Churns Out Thousands Of High Quality & Perfectly Unique Content”

OK so basically, I needed to find out if it 1) created high quality articles, and 2) created unique articles.

1) Does Content Infinity create high quality articles? Yes, pretty good. You’re going to have to do a little formatting and editing to make the articles usable, though.

2) Does it create unique articles? Absolutely not. Copyscape shows it to be pretty much entirely duplicate content, and DupeCop says it is only 12% unique.

3) Additionally, apparently you have to include an author resource box with the article, since they are using free reprint articles to create your article for you.

Conclusion: I would definitely NOT recommend Content Infinity to anyone.

BlogRush: The Latest Way To Get Blog Traffic

Adam — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:03:48 +0000

You may have heard of BlogRush, the latest product from John Reese. It’s touted as being “the fastest and easiest way to drive a flood of visitors to your blog”. It’s basically a advertising exchange program designed specifically for blogs.

I believe that BlogRush may become a powerful, dependable tool for driving blog traffic. The key to success with BlogRush is getting other bloggers in your network/downline, though. Leverage is where the power is with this system…

Click here to learn more about or join BlogRush

New Web 2.0 Sites…Hot & Fresh out the kitchen!

Noah — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:36:07 +0000

This past week I had the privlage of attending an entrepreneures meet up at the home of 23 year old multi-millionare Ryan Allis’ home. Ryan Allis is the owner of multiple internet companys. Most well known is icontact.com. There were some great new sites to consider for hot new web 2.0. First off was BookMesh, a site that is in invatation only phase for networking based on books. You like certin books it links you up with other users and has recomendations on books that you like based on other users. The second company which I realy like is ShoeBoxed.com, a very cool service that allows you to enter a shoe boxed email so that you dont have to worry about getting spammed. The shoeboxed account also keeps all your recepts in a well formatted interface so you can look back for historical purposes. I have already registered and look forward to using it for business purposes. Please check these hot new web 2.0 sites and let me know what you think!

Product Review. Dragon Naturally Speaking 9

Noah — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 22:07:51 +0000

Hello everyone. This is Noah from the comfort of my home and the comfort without typing. I thought that I would post this blog as the first real life test with my brand-new Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9. And boy I must say I am impressed. Not being one that is a big fan of typing, or a great speller. I am extremely excited about having this program and not having to type as much anymore. It takes a little getting used to but boy it smokes having to type everything. And I must say that I am pretty impressed with the quality of the speech recognition and the speed at which I can speak without slowing down. The Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is my new best friend. I can not communicate the amount of enthusiasm that I have for this program right now you have no idea. It is so much faster to be able to speak everything I want to communicate versus typing it. I had never taken any typing courses in school growing up nothing whatsoever. I have naturally due to the work that I do developed a speed of typing around 40 words per minute. And I must say that this Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 is much faster than my measly 40 words per minute. I will highly recommend this program to anyone even remotely considering purchasing. I got the standard version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9. Unfortunately I couldn’t buy it from my favorite store Circuit City. So I ran on down to Best Buy which is a partner that carried and stock the software program on the shelves and picked it up for $99. I wish I had bought this program a long time ago. I don’t know why I had waited so long. I had heard about this program years and years ago when it was in its early stages and I’m sure it has made an a drastic improvement since then but I am very impressed with how good this works. You do still have to communicate your punctuation. But in my opinion even with that it is so much faster than typing regular style. I am not sure if this works with Mac programs because I just bought a brand-new HP. But if you have a PC this is a must-have productivity tool for any entrepreneur or business professional. As for myself I’m sure that is going to help with my own spelling and grammatical errors that I usually make in my typing.

Yahoo! Better Than Google?

Noah — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:31:18 +0000

That may be a little ambitious of a statement. Having just officially become a Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador I must say I have come to appreciate how Yahoo! does business. There are a few differences in the program that I am pleased with. I also Like the fact that Yahoo! has a large enough staff that I can call in and speak with an actual person in less than 30 seconds. Also one thing I didn’t know was that there content ads are also just CPC not CPM. My affection is starting to increase for Yahoo! search marketing. I no longer look at them as the red headed stepchild of search. No offense if you are a red headed step child. Yahoo!’s stats on page views and average user time are impressive. I also cant wait till they roll out their publisher network. That should make things interesting!

Google Print Ad’s In Full Effect

Noah — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:23:57 +0000

“Did you see my News Paper Ad?”
It’s now a question you can ask your clientele. Google has officially rolled out its news paper advertising interface. You will find it under the “Print Ad’s” Tab in your Google AdWords account. I have not yet personally run any Google Print Ad’s as of yet. Or for my clientele. I did go through the process to get some ad estimates for my local newspaper that has 179K circulation monday thru sat and 200K+ on sundays. The per day issue price desired from Raleigh News and Disturber…oops…I mean News and Observer is about $800 for week days and about $1,000 for sunday. The cool thing about the google interface is it allows you to place your bid for the ad spot at a percentage of the premium request cost desired from the publisher. So you can say “Im willing to pay 75% of the price the publisher is asking.” and you might just get that, if they don’t have others lined up and ready or if the other bidders are not as high as you. It’s a great set up. Very user friendly as always with Google standards. They even have a section to hook you up with ad designers to help you create the ad you want to run. You can also select the size from really small to full page. I recommend you get in there and price out your local Publisher or the publisher in your target market. Maybe even try to run one for 10% of asking price and see if you get it….You never know, Especially with it being so new. From first impression still looks like the print ads are for marketers with deep pockets.