todaytest 06/02/2007

The value of a blog for your business - Small Business Opportunities & Ideas  Annotated

But a small business isn’t a traditional publisher. The value of attention can be far greater than just advertising revenue. We have clients who blog for attention - and when they get that attention, it might lead to:

• a new client worth many thousands of dollars (we have a client who measures customer value in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars).


• a new influencer who can indirectly lead to many new customers.

You don’t need a massive audience for blogging to be worthwhile. Getting the attention of a niche audience can be extremely valuable, but not if you think in terms of advertising revenue.

Here is an exercise for you. Visualise your ideal prospective clients and your ideal influencers (the people who can send lots of small customers your way).

Particls - About - Features  Annotated

About Particls  For Publishers

Particls allows you to offer a
customized, user-friendly news and alerts
system that extends the reach of
your brand and your content right to
the desktop and beyond. Get more return
visitors, differentiate your brand and
earn more revenue.

There are two ways that publishers can take
advantage of Particls.

inTouch Basic for quick and easy integration
(refer below), and


inTouch Partner
 for more advanced customization and revenue share.

inTouch Basic

Get more return traffic (alert users about new content)

To embed
Particls on your site simply type
in a URL to a website, RSS/Atom
Feed or OPML file and use the
embed code provided.

todaytest 05/31/2007

89-Ways-To-Optimize-Your-Website-For-Filthy-Rich-Customers  Annotated

Filthy-Rich Customers

Hello and welcome, Get ready. I'm about to share with you a secret system that will test your nerve. Make others think you've gone mad. And maybe even make you think you've gone mad yourself... ...but it will cost you nothing to try. It will cut your workload massively. And it will increase your profits whatever your business. And the best bit.

todaytest 05/30/2007

Metrics 2.0: Mobile advertising to hit US$11.35B; Will Google stay No.1 in Mobile Search?  Annotated

Mobile advertising to hit US$11.35B; Will Google stay No.1 in Mobile Search?

Worldwide
spend on mobile advertising will rise to US$11.35 billion by 2011, up from
$871 million this year, according
to Informa Telecoms & Media report "Mobile Advertising Services:
generating revenue through subsidised content".  In
2007, mobile advertising spend will more than double from 2006 levels to
over US$1.5bn. 

Infroma forecasts
that search-related mobile ad revenue will climb to $1.5 billion in 2011,
up from just $3 million this year.

todaytest 05/29/2007

GameTrove

• Might be fun for the kids - post by bmassey

Bit Blot

todaytest 05/28/2007

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

todaytest 05/27/2007

Welcome to MindHabits.com  Annotated

tress Relief through Simple, Daily Games

MindHabits produces computer software designed to help people reduce their stress levels and boost their self-confidence, using games that automatically retrain the way the mind responds to social stress. This patent pending technology is the result of a decade of research by scientists at McGill University, one of the world’s top medical research centers. The software – based on the emerging science of social intelligence – helps you practice the mind habit of focusing on positive social feedback, which in turn reduces stress levels and improves self

Cerebral Vortex Games - Welcome

todaytest 05/22/2007

Remember These 5 Copywriting Formulas » Copywriting Blog By Copywriter Michel Fortin  Annotated

I used to teach marketing and selling at a local college here in Ottawa. And one of the things I used to teach with (I also use them all the time when I want to learn and remember new things, too) are mnemonics.

Mnemonics are tools or devices that aid retention. My best form of mnemonic are acronyms.

Do you remember the little ditty to remember all the planets taught mostly in kindergarten? It goes, "My very eager mother just served us nine pizzas," where the first letter of each word represents the name of each planet in our solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto).

Similarly, I use acronyms to teach about copywriting. I do this to help you remember, appreciate, and understand the process I go through when I write copy. Here they are, with their meaning (they are also linked to their respective articles covering the formula in detail):

Six Elements for Effective Landing Pages | Marketing Pilgrim  Annotated

MarketingExperiments just released a new research brief discussing how to make landing pages more successful.  As always, their conclusions are very relevant to online retailers and other companies who are trying to generate an action from their visitors.

A key part of the study involved trying to determine whether long copy or short copy performed better when the desired action was a simple email capture.  As it turns out, the short copy was more successful.

In the past, many studies have shown that long copy is more effective in certain situations.  However, MarketingExperiments believes that there are four factors that should influence your decision about whether to use long or short copy–the cost of what you are selling, the perceived risk, the commitment level, and the motivation.

In other words, if you are selling a high priced product, asking for a lot of personal information, requiring a time commitment, or using logic as your selling strategy, use long copy.  On the other hand, if you are giving away something for free without commitment and selling with emotion, use short copy.

MarketingExperiments identifies six elements that affect the performance of landing pages:

1) Friction - how much work the visitor has to do (this includes the reading)

2) Incentives - extras that are thrown in to sweeten the deal

3) Visitor motivation - how much they want what you have

4) Value proposition - the perception visitors have of you and what you are selling

5) Anxiety - the perceived risk to the visitor

6) Credibility - how well you convey trustworthiness

To increase site conversion, you should focus on these elements.  It is important to understand that few changes will in themselves make dramatic differences.  My company tripled our conversion rate over the past year, but we did it with a huge number of very minor changes.  Even very modest improvements in these six areas can cumulatively add up to a significant increase.