Unbelievable round for Fare.net founders (now Sprice.com)

You know by now that the niche online travel sector is either heating up or boiling over. Groople has being raising money, Kayak closed a round at EURO9mm and is a toast of Europe (according to Red Herring) (UPDATE - RedHerring link seems to be dead along with the news paper. New link here to alarm:clock who cite the round at Euro 8million not 9) and Red Herring itself seems to be carrying a travel industry story every other week. Questions of bubbles and busts have naturally been raised.

Now - in what appears to be out of the blue - the founders of Singaporean based Fare.net have raised more than US$10mm to launch a new travel meta search business in Europe and Asia. Rumours are that the post money valuation of this new venture is as much as $50mm. Leading the business will be former Zuji CEO and Travelprice COO Pascal Bordat (though strangely the Red Herring article does not mention his Zuji background). This venture is backed by smart VC money - Sofinnova Partners in Paris and Walden from the Valley - but they will have to move quickly. Kayak and Sidestep have the global lead and are making moves in Europe, and Bezurk has been operating in the Asian market for a few years now with smart people behind it.

Bezurk has a much better product than Fare.net and has been getting distribution and supply traction (including recent a deal with Lonely Planet).

Another front for us to watch in the Asia online travel war.

Update - company now called Sprice

"Augtomize" year-round

It's hard to believe the month is already over. It seems like just yesterday when Mike Gutner first announced that August was Optimization Month. Since then, members of the AdSense optimization team and Googlers representing other products have shared their findings and best practices for how to optimize your AdSense earnings. We hope you've come through the month with an arsenal of insightful tips and tricks for optimizing not only your AdSense ads, but also your site content for your specific audience.

We'd like to leave you with the following:

1. Nothing warms the hearts of our team more than hearing success stories from AdSense publishers. Please tell us yours!
   
   
2. The road to enlightenment begins with the Optimization Tips page. If you haven't seen it yet or it's been awhile, be sure to check it out.
   
   
3. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime. The AdSense Help group is a great community to post optimization tips and swap best practices with other publishers.

August was Optimization Month, yes, but remember -- you can "Augtomize" any month of the year.

Posted by Carolyn Bang - AdSense Optimization Team

Why's the location under my ad?

In the spirit of posting quick but useful tips, here's a question (paraphrased from a post in the AdWords Help community) that we'd like to answer:

The state of California, where my office is located, shows under my ad. Why is that there? I'm not sure I want it there, so how do I get rid of it?

Here is what's happening: When an advertiser has targeted a city or region in their campaign, the name of that city or region will show under their ad to users who are identified by the AdWords system as being located in that area. This tells the user that your product or service is especially relevant to them - and is intended to help you reach more qualified users.

What to do: If you'd prefer that your ad appear without a region name (while still reaching qualified users), you may want to consider running a country- and territory-targeted campaign with region-specific keywords and ad text, rather than a regionally targeted ad. More details may be found right here.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Flying the physically challenged skies

Have just completed a business trip to Japan as a disabled physically challenged passenger. I tore a ligament playing sport on Sunday but wanted to continue with my trip to Japan, figuring that with car connections and wheel-chair assistance at each end it should still be a relatively successful trip.

I am usually a critic of Qantas for lots of things including charging me a fortune for free tickets, being anti-competitive in their route management and screwing up the implementation of their new video system. But I can tell you that they offer fantastic support for a person who can't walk. Wheel chairs appeared at every turn, staff jumped at the chance to help me move from one place to the other or bring me drinks/food and I was whisked through security, immigration, customs and quarantine at a speed so far unrecorded in my years as a air warrior.

The only downside was that due to security concerns my taxi driver at Sydney airport could not help me to the check-in counter and no-one could leave the check-in counter to help me so I had to struggle with crutches and bags from the curb side to the check-in area.

The Japan visit itself was very productive even if I was effectively confined to the hotel. I did have a chance to go out to dinner on Tuesday night with GTA head of Asia Pacific and Webjet Board Member John Guscic. We shared a great Japanese meal and reminisced about Cendant/Travelport re-organisations one through a hundred and one.

NEWS: The Ultimate Giveaway Of Internet Marketing Tools is Gone!

By Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Hi there,

As you see the unadvertise Super Giveaway of Internet Marketing Products is now gone... I left the download box up a little longer but I had to shut it off before the download server crashed on me.

For those who got the marketing products that by the way had Full Resale Rights... Now you have the opportunity to use this products to make some money by selling them, use them as bonus to improve sales or opt-ins, or just give them away to your customers as gifts.

For the unlucky ones that didn't get the $529 value Super Master Resale Pack! The only thing I can say is that I'm sorry for you...

Not! just kidding ;-)

I going to have a different event, a bigger event soon and I promise I will post the pre-launch of that giveaway event and I will remind you about it untill launch, deal?...

Just don't forget to keep checking my blog for continue updates, and free simple and easy tips that can help you bring more traffic to your website and explode your sales using little or no money...

All the best,

Luis Galarza


The Author: Luis Galarza is a respectable Marketing and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates. Want to lower your Bills, visit: http://www.Cogni360.com/.

A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs
.

Get your products into our search results with Google Base

As an AdWords advertiser, we know that you're interested in increasing the amount of traffic to your site. In the past, we've let you know about Sitemaps to make your site more crawler-friendly for our search results. Now, with Google Base, there's another way to make your products or services searchable on Google. Here's Alison from the Google Base team with the details:

Your site may already be included in our crawl index, but we want to ensure that you also know how you can supplement these results with Google Base - you can submit the products or services that you offer directly to Google Base making them eligible to show on Google.com when a user searches on a relevant query.

Google Base allows you to easily submit all types of online and offline information; whether it's a large selection of shoes that you sell online or information about your consulting service, we'll make it easier for people to find it on Google. If your product or service isn't online yet, we can help you put it there -- for free.

For example, let's say you use AdWords to advertise your job search service. With Google Base, you can include specific information about job offers like title, job description, location and salary and we'll display them in relevant search results on Google, helping you to increase awareness about your service. The more details you include about the information you want to share, the greater the likelihood it will be found by those looking for exactly what you have to offer.

If you're ready to submit information to Google Base, there are currently three ways to do so: you can upload individual items manually via a web form, submit multiple items through a bulk upload, or use our just-released API.

No matter how you choose to submit your info, we hope you'll find this to be a worthwhile addition to the targeted traffic you are already getting from your AdWords campaigns.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Robert's tips for the future

If you've taken the time to make changes to your site over the past month, it's important to monitor their effects. Here are my top three tips to ensure you make the most of measuring your results and gain a deeper understanding of what's happening with AdSense on your site.

1. Get accustomed to custom channels.

The single most effective way I've found for publishers to measure their results is by using custom channels. Custom channels are the ideal way to determine how a recent change in ad placement or ad format has resulted in improved performance. Many publishers fail to keep their custom channel list up to date each time they make a change -- or even worse, don't take the time to set them up at all. Not knowing if you've made the right decision for your site's visitors will make it even more difficult to take the next step, so use custom channels like a tracking device to ensure you're on the road to success.

2. Be analytical in your approach -- use Google Analytics.

Monitoring your AdSense performance need not be restricted to the features within your AdSense account. Learning about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your website will help you make informed decisions regarding ad placement and formats. As we mentioned last week, Google Analytics can help you make choices about improving your site design while incorporating the Adsense optimisation tips into your new layout. Measuring the results of such changes enables better decisions for your site's users, so why not measure your site performance with Analytics?

3. Make yourself available, your reports are now emailable.

If you're serious about measuring how your account is performing, you'll need to keep up to date with your reports. Why spend time trawling through data in your account when you can get it all sent directly to your inbox? Emailable reports are a recent addition to your AdSense account, which give you exactly the data you're interested in on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. What's more, you can send them to multiple email addresses. This way, you can keep your business partner up to date on recent successes. Emailable reports are easy to set up and even easier to access, with one click in your inbox. If you're not using this option already, I encourage you to to set up emailable reports today to monitor the effects of your changes straight away.

Posted by Robert Freeborn – AdSense UK Optimization Team

MONEY TIPS: Did You Finish Your School Shopping for 2006?

By Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Hey Dear Internet Marketer,

Maybe You Did. But, How Many Of Your Potential Customers Didn’t!

What I’m going with this is that a lot of small businesses end their “School Shopping Promotions” to soon or they just plan a one single promotion for the whole month, or simply they market a short promotion for part of the this super sale event… Remember, you need to market to today consumers like you’re marketing to kids, don’t forget that “THE CONSTANT CHANGE” strategy is one of the most powerful marketing methods to keep your customers and prospects to come back or keep checking on your company to see WHAT’S NEW?

A great way to have a successful Month of August Sales Event is by having a super sales day one the first days of the month, have a general monthly promotion, and then run a different promotion every single week until the first days of September.

Do not run the same kind of promotion every week, every single campaign have to be unique (Constant Change Strategy).

So, seat back down and plan a last Back to School sales event to get some of those customers that still in the look out for school sales bargains…

But, what if you don’t sale nothing related to school goods (supplies, computers, clothes, etc.). Well my marketer friends, it’s always a way! For example, a friend of mine Yanik the CEO of Surefire Marketing, a company that sells Internet marketing products, implement a unique idea for promoting his company to his mailing list by sending a email campaign saying that he’s was happy about his daughter going back to school that want to share his joy with clients by providing a one time 24 sales promotion link that would let everyone to purchase any of his products at a special one time discount…

And you know what this campaign generate ton of sales…

So, use your imagination, be creative and test, test, test…

All the best,

Luis Galarza

P.S. Don't forget to get your copy of My Massive Giveaway of Top Quality Internet Marketing Tools with Resale Rights for F.R.E.E before 11:00pm tonight.


The Author: Luis Galarza is a respectable Marketing and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates. Want to lower your Bills, visit: http://www.Cogni360.com/.

A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs
.

Back to school basics

The “back to school” buzz is in the air, and just as it was key to organize your papers in middle school using your trusty Trapper Keeper, it’s important to manage your ads using your AdSense data. Doing so lets you to see the effectiveness of the different implementations you’ve tested out this month and make decisions about next steps. So let’s flash back to the good old days and apply what we learned in middle school.

Vocabulary: Understanding your data

Before you could use a new word from your vocabulary textbook, you needed to understand its definition. Similarly, there are several important statistical values on your Advanced Reports page for which you should know the definitions before doing any analysis. I recommend that you check out our glossary for each of the terms (Page Impression, eCPM, Clicks) to understand how these values are affected by the changes you make to your site.

Foreign languages: Translating your data

Learning a foreign language involves taking a great deal of new information and breaking it down into sizeable chunks to interpret it. As we mentioned in a previous post, URL and custom channels are a great way to take a more granular look at your site and track specific implementation changes you’ve made.

It’s also necessary to create an appropriate measurement for your data. Too much is confusing, and too little is not going to give you accurate results. Normally, good measurements include 30-, 60- and 90-day increments.

Finally, you’ll need to analyze the data. A great feature we offer is the CSV link, which enables you to download your data onto your hard drive so you can rearrange it to your specific needs. I recommend using Google Spreadsheets or Excel.



Art appreciation: Displaying your data

As your art teacher used to say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Staring at raw data can be tedious and won't help you visualize trends in your AdSense stats. This is why tables and graphs are so effective. A table can make your data more comprehensive and easier to read, while a graph helps you to observe visually what's happening to your various values. If you notice that one channel is performing better than another over a set period, it may be time to implement the same changes into your other pages.

Tip: Track the various implementation changes you’ve made on a separate sheet, and note the date. You can then review those dates later and compare them with previous sets of data to discover which changes had the greatest impact on your site.

Quarterly report card

I recommend that you perform this type of analysis every 3 months to ensure that you are optimizing your site to its potential. By tracking and managing your data, you will be on your way to becoming a more savvy AdSense user. And of course, don’t forget to thank your 7th grade teacher for imparting this knowledge.

Posted by Sunil Subhedar - AdSense Optimization Team

Quick tips for editing your seasonal campaigns

As small children wearing book-filled backpacks return to the sidewalks, it's a sure sign that fall is just around the corner. As you enjoy the last few weeks of summer, it's also a good time to look through your active Ad Groups and decide if you need to make any seasonal changes. Below are a few quick tips to make sure your campaigns are seasonally relevant.

Are there items that you only advertise in the summer? If so, there are a number of tools that can help you change these items and replace them with a product for the fall. If you'd like to quickly replace all mentions of 'swimsuit' in your keyword list with 'jacket', the Find and Edit Keywords Tool is for you. To do the same in your ad text, you can take advantage of the Find and Edit Ad Text Tool.

If you'd prefer to keep this Ad Group in place until next summer rolls around, remember that you can simply pause it and resume it again next year. Or, if you know that you'll stop taking orders for your summer cruise on September 15, you can make sure that you stop advertising at the right time by setting an end date for that campaign.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Start A Painting Business

This great new web site helps painter start and grow a successful painting business of their own. There is a free monthly newsletter jam packed with tips for painting business owners.

Visit now www.StartAPaintingBusiness.com

GEP Turns 100 (in a manner of speaking)

Last week we added our 100th Google Enterprise Professional partner worldwide. And while the milestone is absolutely a reason to celebrate, it's not all about quantity--the breadth and expertise of our partners is what really makes this program (and our customers) successful.

We now have a whole range of partners...
- Small consultancies handling things like secure search and web design
- Large integrators combining the Google Search Appliance with content management systems, portals, and other enterprise applications behind the firewall
- ISVs building connectors to extend the reach of Google search
- Application vendors leveraging Google search, including having their solutions be "Powered by Google"
- Geospatial integrators helping with deployments of Google Earth Enterprise

And our partners are all over the globe, helping customers in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Customers are even getting in on the act, developing OneBox modules to make dynamic business information more accessible (just like our partners are doing). Best of all, our customers are getting the services and solutions they need.

To see our growing list of partners, visit the "Partners" section of the Google Enteprise website: http://www.google.com/enterprise/gep.

Can't ignore the Wotif results

There was no WTF for WTF as they reported a good set of results today. See
Travelweekly
Eyefortravel
Travelmole
Courier Mail (number one Brisbane Newspaper - Wotif's home town)

Two interesting points from this

1. Net profit after tax of AU$16.5mm up 38% year-on-year. That is a great number as above guidance given but both the guidance and the growth is probably the lowest annual growth ever for Wotif. Market was expecting more and the stock price has dropped 3-5%.

2. They are paying a dividend of 1 cent. Investors do not normally turn to Internet stocks for dividend returns - that's what banks and telcos are for. Is only a distribution of $2mm or so. Not sure how to read that - is it just for show, to highlight that Wotif does not need money or maybe they are trying to build story that they should not be treated as an Internet stock and more like "regular" investment, one that can produce an attractive divident yield. Convincing the market that Wotif is "regular" will help with volatitity but not with the multiple on their value.

I have said before that growth out of Australia will be hard for Wotif, so they are right to try and adjust the market's thinking on their future growth. Congrats to Graeme, Andrew, Robbie and the rest on this result and approach.

More new owners for Travelport

The steps toward a bust-up of Travelport has begun. Blackstone has flipped 14% of Travelport in record time to Technology Crossover Ventures. Superfast flip just days after the acquistion was completed. Could just be part of Blackstone trying to spread its risk, additional reworking of the balance sheet and draw out some value. However Blackstone and TCV are not famous for the long haul investments. They both will be looking for way to turn a $4.3 investment into min $5.5-6bil.

Building a Better App

Since we launched Gmail two years ago, many users have been asking us if they can use Gmail as their regular work e-mail. We understand why - in the corporate environment, the average employee gets about 10 times more mail than the average consumer! With that much e-mail – most users want the speed, storage space, simple-yet-rich user interface and the ability to search messages in a snap that Gmail provides.

Well, let me let you in a little secret and some big news.

The little secret is that I've been using a "special" version of Gmail as my work e-mail client for a while now. Having used regular e-mail clients all my life, I was a little skeptical about the web mail solution. But it took me little time to realize the benefits. Not only the everywhere access (since it's web-based), but there's no more "foldering" at the end of the day, finding e-mails and attachments is a snap and... well, the speed! My inbox holds about 10 gigs of mail, and it's still as fast as when it was empty. Try that with your regular e-mail client!

Now the big news… today we're announcing the launch of Google Apps for Your Domain, a combination of GMail + Calendar + Talk that small organizations can brand, customize and use. And this is just the start! We expect to release an enterprise version by the end of the year that will have the functionality larger organizations require.

Isn't it time everyone at work loves their e-mail, just like they love Gmail?

Optimization Month, Week 5: Putting it all together

So you’ve optimized your pages and implemented our best practices. Now what? It’s time to take a look at your results and decide where to go from here. To close out Optimization Month, this week we’ll share tips on how to monitor the performance of your account, how to evaluate your results -- and how to figure out what to do next.

Now that you’ve implemented some of our optimization tips and best practices, hopefully your revenue is on the rise. But what if you see ups and downs in your stats? Never fear -- it’s quite common for revenue to fluctuate over time for any number of reasons, like which ads your users click on, or changes in ad inventory.

Seasonality can also affect revenue. If you run a fan site for a TV show, you might see a drop in revenue after the season finale due to a reduction in advertiser inventory or a decrease in the number of site targeting campaigns. Or, if you run an education site, you may see revenue decline during the summer vacation due to decreased page views. This is completely normal, and things will bounce back.

It’s crucial to keep these normal cyclical changes in mind when evaluating your stats. It’s also important to compare apples to apples. For instance, be sure you’re comparing days or months that received a similar number of page views. This will ensure that you are making accurate data comparisons. Using custom channels will also help you compare ad unit statistics at a very granular level to determine exactly which units are performing well, and which need to be modified or moved in order to boost CTR and eCPM.

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about innovative strategies other successful publishers have used, check out some of our case studies.

Remember that every site is unique, so it’s critically important to keep testing and experimenting to see what performs the best for your own site. Don’t be afraid to try new things! And finally, I leave you with the following words of wisdom: Duct tape is like The Force -- it has a Light side and a Dark side and it holds the universe together.

Posted by Chrissie Kawasaki - AdSense Optimization Team

REVIEWS: Here Is My No B.S. Success University Critique!

By Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Hi everyone,

Success Learning Systems CEO Matt Morris started "The Success University System" more than a year ago when he sign up over 20,000 students. A few month ago my business partner Anna Phommatham told to check it out, and let me tell you this is a program that I am very excited about. So much, that I devoted nearly a month on writing an ebook that will help anyone who joins the program under us to build their own paying downline, but more about this later. First here's my No B.S. review of Success University.

Success University is essentially a company that provide access to over 50 of the world's leading personal achievement authors, speakers and teachers, whose aim it is to teach people all over the world how to become successful and achieve anything they want to achieve in life, whether it's achieving financial success or simply becoming healthy, or improving your relationships, and help you develop a leader mind in you.

Some well-known names associated with this program include Stone Evans, Jay Abraham, Brian Tracey, Les Brown, Cynthia Kersey and Robert Allen, and even the Rich Jerk to name just a few.

The program costs $49.95 a month that's less than $2.50 per day, which gives you full unlimited access to the back office which is essentially a huge learning centre with information worth thousands of dollars. It contains many ebooks and audio files to help you achieve success, plus it offers regular lessons you can enroll in and learn at your own pace, and live calls that you can listen to. It really is an excellent personnal development package.

If that wasn't enough you can also potentially earn an avalanche sum of money every month by referring others to the program. This is where the fun start.

The one in a kind compensation plan, although at first glance appears slightly complicated, is actually quite straight forward once you take the time to learn more about it. I recommend listening to Tricia Smith's compensation training plan, available in the back office, which explains everything in plain english.

In basic terms, firstly you can earn between $20 and $40 for each personal referral depending on your ranking within the organization. Secondly you can earn money from the efforts of your downline infinite levels deep (which includes spillover from your upline). Your downline consists of two legs, and in order to start making money from your downline you just need to personally recruit two members and place one in each leg. Then you can start earning $40 for every cycle of 6 members with at least a 1/3 : 2/3 balance, ie 2 in one leg, 4 in the other, 3 in one and 3 in the other, 4 in one and 2 in the other.

Like I mentioned before this sounds fairly complicated, and the truth is that it took me a while to get my head around it, but once I listened to Trisha Smith's excellent call from the membership area everything became a lot clearer.

I truly recommend signing up to Success University and trying out the program for free for 14 days. This will give you plenty of time to learn more about the program, and the compensation plan that is making a lot of internet marketers very wealthy. All that is required is that you make a very small donation of $2 to Feed The Children Foundation, a very worthy cause.

As I said at the start of this review, every member who joins my Success University team, even if it's only as a free trial member, will receive my FREE ebook report entitled "Success University Downline Building Secrets". Simply sign up using the link provided and I will email you a copy as soon as I receive the new member confirmation message from Success University.

I want to build one of the strongest Success University teams out there, so therefore I want everyone in my downline to be successful in building their own downline. But, also I Will Help You Build a Paying Downline FREE!

Here's how you can get started right away:

1) Click on the link below and leave your name and email address: http://OnlineSuccessUniversity.official.ws/

2) Enroll for a 14-day free trial and instantly receive $1949 in free education. As soon as I receive the new member confirmation message from Success University, I will send you a free copy of my report, and give you access to my team leader secret Success University training web site, Free access to an Affiliate Training site, and a Web Site Master Video Course a value of over $400.

3) Start receiving my spillover, and begin recruiting your own members using the methods outlined in my free ebook. I look forward to welcoming you to my team, and helping you build your downline of paying members.


All the best...

Luis Galarza

The Author: Luis Galarza is a respectable Marketing and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates. Want to lower your Bills, visit: http://www.Cogni360.com/.

A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs
.

Best and worst business trip cities

Am travelling to Tokyo tonight for work. Spending two days there for a 3 hour meeting which means that I should have time to look around and see a bit of Tokyo. Unfortunately I will not actually have the time off as I have busted my ankle and cannot possibly walk around and see the site. However it led me to think about which were the best and worst cities that I have been stranded in after a business meeting with time to spare.

My top three stranded in cities are:

1. Paris - The key to a stranded city is can you go to one/two places quickly that will keep you entertained and able to see the heart of its culture, food and people. Paris is the clear leader here. Drop yourself in the middle of the Marias or St Germain for two hours and you will be entertained, fed and culturally overloaded with time spare to jump on the train back to Gare du Nord or CDG to head home. At times there are more tourists around you than (cranky) Parisians but that can be managed in short bites. Nothing beats a lazy stroll through St Germain ending up in garden just behind Notre Dame.

2. Amsterdam - it is a beautiful city but most importantly it is relative small and everyone speaks English. You can see a couple of key sites very quickly. If you are stranded for a night, the Dutch are a great party people. The city is flat and closely packed making movement from bar to bar, hotspot to hotspot easy and painless. There are also great art spots- Rijksmuseum - that can easily absorb a few lost hours. Anne Frank House provides a powerful emotional view into the dark side of European history.

3. Ho Chi Minh city - so different to any other city I have been to. Have travelled through crazy, fast growing, traffic mad cities like Bangkok and Hong Kong but Ho Chi Minh is unique. The city itself is not beautiful or magical in the way that the top European destinations are but there are chances to absorb a culture and see a history that I have not found matched anywhere else. For example, the traffic - while crazy - moves like no other city. There is a ballet like quality to the motorbikes. You would swear it is co-ordinated and coreographed. Some how it has moved beyond chaos to a form of understood anarchy. Then there is the history of the city. You can look around and see the French, American and Communist influences. The food is similarly drawn for Asian, European and North American influences unlike any other.

Bottom three are:

1. Kunming China - I spent a few days late last year at the China Travel Mart in Kunming China. Kunming is a 10mm plus people city but has nothing to offer the tourist/quick visitor. It is famous for three things - its tea, tobacco and tragically HIV rates. The International Airport is one of the most painful I have ever had to go through as all flights out to Hong Kong had to be boarded via a long and boring bus ride from the airport.

2. Kuala Lumpur - too busy, too hard to travel around and too many people trying to rip you off. One of my favourite moments was struggling with the heat and humidity - sweating profusely - when I came across a sunglasses shop. I was about to try on a pair when the vendor grabbed them out of my hand "You can't wear them, you are too sweaty" he screamed. "Of course I am it is 35 degrees and 90% humidity". "But, if you sweat" he said pointing to the sunglasses "the colour will come off" indicating the rims.

3. Stockholm - I should have loved Stockholm. The people are nice, the food nice, the drinks...nice, the old city...well...nice, the transport options were...um...nice and the hotel I stayed in was (yes) nice. That was the problem everything was so damn, unrelentingly, frustratingly, mind-numbingly nice. There were no disappointments but similarly nothing that grabbed your eyes, ears and bones and said - "Look at this, isn't it fantastic". Seems unfair to damn a city for being nice but sometimes nice can be painful.

Am disappointed that I will not be able to take up this chance to learn more about Tokyo. Share your top cities in the comment section if you have time.

Make Your Listing Stand Out!

"Ebay has millions of listings at any given moment. How do I make my listing stand out?"

Good question! Here are a couple of quick tips for sellers old and new to consider when creating a new listing on ebay.

First, write a great title for your listing. Use every one of the 55 spaces that ebay provides by being complete, accurate, and descriptive. Think like a buyer! What words would you search for if you were looking for an item like yours to buy? Those are the words to include. Remember to follow ebay's rules - no keyword spamming, no misleading titles. If you're selling a pair of shoes, what color are they? What style? What size? Are they leather? What brand? Be honest and complete. Be creative! Dressy, formal, casual? Let those potential buyers know! Selling boots? Are they work boots, cowboy boots, fashion boots, suede boots, leather boots, brown boots, black boots, new brown leather cowboy boots? I think you get the idea. Now, choose a couple of the best words in the title and CAPITALIZE them. Please don't use all caps - that really does make the title hard to read. However, by capitalizing a couple of the key words you accomplish two things. One, those words stand out; two, your title will be pushed onto a second line which makes the space for your listing just a little bit bigger, helping it to be more easily noticed on the search page.

Second tip, list your item with a gallery photo. Gallery photos are the pictures that show up on the search results page. Make it a great photo! Use lots of light to make the picture bright and clear. People looking for your shoes don't want to see the spots on your carpet and they don't want to see your kitchen cabinets, so be sure to place the item on a clean surface of a contrasting color and aim the camera down at the item, not across the item to include the rest of the room in the background. Use a photo editor to crop the picture close to the item so the item fills the space. Try to create a nice vertical format for the picture. This, like using the capital letters, will make your listing take up more space on the search results page and make it stand out and be noticed.

Always follow ebay's rules when you create your item listings and consider the above tips to give yourself the edge and make your listings rise above the crowd. Happy listing and happy selling!

(The above article is reprinted from my ebay Guide of the same name. To read all of my ebay Guides, click here.)

MONEY TIP: The Number One eBay Business Start Up Tip

By Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Hi Internet Friend,

Get a massive industry shift after using a super easy secret that helped a college kid make over a $1 million in sales in one single year just by selling a simple product on eBay.

The news about this million dollars kid was so popular that even Entrepreneur Magazine with the help of American Online (AOL) jump on gossip and did an exclusive interview that turn into an eBay Business Tip article, that had really good online auction business advice that can be used by anyone who have or want to start their own eBay Income Venture...

The secret about his and many other eBay marketers success, it's not one of the main secrets but it's one of the most important advice given by the Super eBay Power Seller Brandon Dupsky who made over $8 Million on the last year alone. Now Brandon is teaching his techniques through his eBay Power Seller course, and he's not leaving any secret uncovered.

The simple and easy way make sure your new eBay business start in the right track is by not selling what people want, but what people need. For example: Lots of people want to have their very own Plasma TV, but every new mom needs a stroller.

Hey, don't get me wrong, of course you can make lots of money selling what people wants. Actually, Brandon Dupsky eBay Course teaches you how to make money on eBay by selling almost anything even stuff that you may think people don't need or want. I trully recommend you to check it out because it will really help you start or improve your eBay business.

So, do you research and find quality products that are in constant demand, just like the strollers that make that college entrepreneur become a millionaire.


All the best...

Luis Galarza

About the Author: Luis Galarza is a respectable Marketing and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates. Want to lower your Bills, visit: http://www.Cogni360.com/.

A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs
.

TRAFFIC TIPS: 7 Ways To Make Your Company Hot And Keep It Hot!

By Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Hey Dear Internet Friend,

Right here are some things you can put on practice that will make sure you're not be forgaten by fast-changing consumers:

1. Get The Media To Talk About You And Your Company: Articles, Press Releases, Blogs, Fundrasings.
2. Find New Exciting Products That You Can Offer To Your Customers: Search The Web For Wholesale Suppliers, Joint Ventures, Affiliate Programs, Expos, Trade Shows.
3. Find Or Develop New Services: You Know Your Customers Already, So Provide Them With A Solution To One Of Their Problems.
4. Marry With Hot Trends And News Events: Write Sales Copy With A Little Kick Of Whatever It's Hot On The News.
5. Put Seasons And Holidays To Work: Develop Special Promotions For Slow Seasons And Holidays.
6. Marry With Movies And Entertainment Events: Use Hot TV Shows, Movies And Entertainment Events As Part Of Your Promotion Or Sales Copy.
7. Marry With Other Fads Even If They Are Unrelated: Juts Like McDonald's Use Kids Toys From Hot Movies or TV Shows to Gain Repeat Visits. Or Like I Use It Here.

All the best...

Luis Galarza


the Author: Luis Galarza is a respectable Marketing and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates. Want to lower your Bills, visit: http://www.Cogni360.com/.

A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs
.

Maintenance on Saturday, August 26, at 10 am PDT

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Optimization Month posts to bring you this update: Our engineers will be performing routine system maintenance on Saturday (8/26) from 10 am to 2 pm PDT, so you won't be able to access your account during this time frame. Please be assured that ads will continue to be served to your pages, and your account statistics and earnings will be recorded as usual. In the meantime, feel free to go back and review all the great tips our optimization specialists have posted on the blog this month.

As always, we appreciate your patience!

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Optimization Team

A Small Business Guarantee

We couldn't have said it better ourselves:

"I can guarantee one thing: you will keep making more files, and losing track of them, every day. And whether you buy a search tool tomorrow or never, getting a grip on your files will save you time and money."

The above quote is from Network World small business networking columnist James Gaskin; from his latest column, "Find that file fast" whereby he discusses the Google Mini and additional search tools small businesses should consider in helping manage an ever-growing amount of data. We concur with Mr. Gaskin's prognostication: we're seeing more small business customers who not only need to index more data on their intranets and web sites, but also different types of data (HTML, PDF, Office docs, etc) that can be found quickly. And our Google Mini customers are proof that as small business websites, intranets and file shares grow, their search accuracy, response and benefits can thrive, not diminish.

Insight into your site

We hope you've gained insight into the various tools and products Google has to offer for increasing the visibility of your site. As Boyar promised, we’ll close out this week's theme a little differently, by sharing with you the story of a publisher who used a number of Google products to increase his site's audience 50-fold in just two months.

Ryan, webmaster for TropicalYarns.com, had been using AdSense for content and AdSense for search to monetize his pages. However, he noticed that his site’s visitors consisted mainly of existing customers. Using Analytics, he was able to better understand his new and returning visitors. After pinpointing the most popular page on his site in June, he added an email newsletter sign-up form to that page and saw the subscription list grow by 20%. In just one month, he watched new visitors grow to 75% of his audience.



At the same time, Ryan used AdWords to advertise his site’s offerings. After experimenting for three weeks to optimize his ads, he was able to achieve a higher clickthrough rate and bring more engaged users to his site; in July, 14% of his site’s visitors arrived via an AdWords ad, and these visitors made up 22% of pageviews for the month. Plus, by using his Analytics reports to determine the search keywords which brought users to his site, he was able to make informed decisions about his ads. For example, because the search phrase "free patterns" drove organic traffic to his site, he knew he didn’t need to run ads for that phrase.

Since Tropical Yarns is a retail store, Ryan also decided to experiment with products such as Google Base and Google Checkout. By listing more than 1,000 products on Base and offering customers a way to purchase them online, Ryan reached out to new users; although the store is located in South Florida, interested buyers from all over the United States can now visit the site to make purchases.

Recently, Ryan has been experimenting with Google Video to engage users on his site – future plans include a short commercial for the store, videos of classes, and more. Ryan's story serves as a great example of how you can improve your site's content and visibility through many Google products.

When asked about his overall experience, Ryan commented that "one by one, each of the dozen Google products we used has increased awareness of our website and helped to drive more quality traffic. No single item was overnight magic, but doing them all has proved to be a huge success!"

Posted by Arlene Lee - AdSense Optimization Team

Partnering Down Under

The Google Enterprise Professional program is now on four continents! In addition to partners in North America, Europe, and Japan, we now proudly welcome Australia to our enterprise partner family.

More specifically, web services company Panalysis has signed on to help our customers in Australia and New Zealand get even more out of their Google Search Appliance and Google Mini deployments. Panalysis has extensive experience with web analytics (including Google Analytics, of course!), optimization, websites, and intranets. Also, with a focus on user experience, they're a great fit for Google. We're excited to have them on board and excited to be breaking new ground down under!

Peace and quiet returns to the skies - for a little while

Sighs of relief across the business world as it was announced this week that Boeing's Connexion service is to be shut down later in the year. In the pre-connexion days there was a sense of calm and safety about being 30,000ft above the ground - able to do your work, watch a movie, have a drink with a perfect excuse for being cut off from the world and deadlines. Then connexion came along and there was no excuse, no escape, no time out - email was everywhere. The first time I saw the leaflet staring at me from the magazine pouch on a Singapore Airlines flight just before take off I almost ran from the plane screaming, ready to jump on a Garuda flight if necessary to escape.

I am sure the closure of Connexion will not be the end to connectivity in the sky but hopefully there will be a brief window before the launch of the next generation that will allow business travellers to once again have 30,000 reasons why they were not able to check their email.

Google Analytics hearts AdSense publishers

As an AdSense publisher, you've probably put a lot of effort into making your website the best it can be -- optimizing your ads, building good content, and driving high quality visits. But there's one crucial step left: to see just how effective these things are. How many visitors are you getting each day? What pages are they visiting? Where do they come from, and which keywords brought them to your site -- both from pay-per-click efforts and from natural search?

Many website owners push their site live, and then leave it at that, remaining in the dark about all these questions. Google Analytics can enlighten you. We think it's much more fun to have the answers to these burning questions, and that you owe it to yourself to know for sure. After all, this is the payoff for all the hard work that's gone into creating your site. When you launch or make a change to it, there's that initial excitement of wondering who's going to check it out. And Google Analytics can help you with all of this.



It's as easy to set up as AdSense. All you need to do is add a couple lines of code to each page in your site, and to gain valuable insight with graphical representations of visitor levels and detailed, easy-to-use reports that show:

• pageviews of each of individual web pages
  
• the average time spent on each page
  
• new vs. returning visitors
  
• visitors' geographical location and language
  
• their browser and platform choices
  
• click path data
  

Perhaps this gives you an idea of how Google Analytics can help you measure the success of changes to your site, and confidently make design choices. The best part? After retreating into invitation mode since it launched last November, we're happy to tell you that Analytics is now available for everyone, so you can get started analyzing your site right away.

Happy tracking!

Posted by Jeff Gillis - Product Marketing for Google Analytics

TRAFFIC TIPS: Watch Spongebob Squarepants and learn quality marketing secrets

By Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Dear Blogger Friend,

Yeap!... You read this right, I'm talking about one of the most successful TV characters which in high demand right now, Spongebob Squarepants!

I watched everyday with my daughter Naomi for three reasons; one is because she makes me, two it's actually funny, and three because teach me a super marketing lesson that it's suppose to be in every business marketing plan as one of the most important business strategies.

But, the cartoon also teach this super tip on one of the shows, which shows how Spongebob becomes very popular in his town when by accident he rips his pants in the middle-rear and this made him the funniest "man" in town. Then he starting ripping his pants every time he had an opportunity to pull laughs out of a big crow. This technique worked for him for days. Until one day people weren't laughing anymore, and it didn't matter how many times or ways he rip his pants... The truth was that Spongebob wasn't HOT anymore!

And that's the truth about every business, don't matter how big or small your business is, it can go from hot to cold in no time.

So, what's the so call SUPER MARKETING SECRET that Mr Squarepants has teach us here? And even made in 1996, Ken Hakuta "Dr. Fad," talk about the issue of what he called "short product life cycles" or short customer interest. He advised, "Pretend you're marketing to kids. They get bored with products easily and outgrow them. A company must develop new ideas and be agile enough to turn them into working products fast."

And this take us to the super tip which is: Constant Change!

We all are interest on new stuff or technology, why you think NEWS are so popular...

Anyway, when you see someone you know in the street almost every time the question "What's new?" it's part of the conversation, isn't it? This is because we don't care about old stuff, we need and want to know what's new?...

So, Constant Change it's about keeping your company HOT in the customer's mind...

Just learn from the big and successful companies, because they use this technique all the time. McDonald's never go more than two weeks before having some kind of promotion, new toys, games, or anything that will make people come back for more.... Private tours of successful web sites now available here!

On my next blog I'll be talking about how to make your company HOT again and again.


All the best...

Luis Galarza, a Business and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates. If you need to lower your monthly bills just visit: http://www.Cogni360.com/.

A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs
.

Just a click away

You're an AdSense publisher, and you've got great content, but you want a) more people to know about it and b) your loyal readers to know when you post new content so they can visit your site easily -- maybe by the click of a button. By building up traffic, you can get more eyeballs on your content and of course your AdSense ads. This is where Google Toolbar comes in.

There's more to Toolbar than just web search, pop-up blocking and auto-filling web forms. With the recent release of Google Toolbar 4, millions of Toolbar users are now adding custom buttons directly to their browsers. You can help users visit your site (and more) with just a click.



By adding your website's custom button to the Google Toolbar, people can instantly:

• Visit your website
  
  
• Search your website by entering a query into the Google search box and clicking your custom button
  
  
• Get the latest feeds from your website by clicking the drop-down menu next to your custom button

Sound daunting? It shouldn't -- creating a button is actually quite simple. Just go to our Getting Started page and submit your button for display in our Button Gallery. We already have over 700 custom buttons. Who knows? Maybe yours will end up on my Google Toolbar!

Posted by Joyce Sohn - Toolbar Product Marketing Manager

OK maybe not an acquisition in Japan for Expedia

Interview with Barney Harford on Expedia's plans for Asia sheds a little more light on what they are thinking about in Japan. He killed off my musings on an acquisition in Japan but indicates a determination to launch in the market with a hotel only offering and then look at expanding into full service. Selling flights online in Japan is extremely hard. On a stand-alone basis you need to connect to more than one GDS to see all of the domestic possibilities - no one has really cracked that yet. For packaging, you have to explain face-to-face the cancellation requirements and other restrictions killing off online packaging sales (assuming my understanding of Japanese tourism law is still up to date). That is before you get into licensing, bonding and fulfilment issues. Hotels are clearly the easy first sell but they too have some issues. Mytrip/Rakuten Travel created the online hotel market in Japan (like Wotif did in Australia, HRS in Germany, Venere in Italy etc). This is good news as the market is proven. The bad news is they did it offering less than 10% commission - I think as low as 6.5-7%. There is no way that Expedia can compete for domestic travel sales using 25% commission.

Barney will know all this - not least of all because before Rakuten bought MyTrip, MyTrip was the provider of Japanese inventory for Hotels.com.

Be webmaster of your domain (or sub-domain)

If a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it, does it make a sound? Even more perplexing: if you have a great, content-rich website and nobody visits it, is the content useful? Rather than debate this, I'd like to share with you five ways that Google webmaster tools can help you drive more users to your site and improve the visibility of the site content you've worked so hard to create.

1. Submit all of your pages to the Google index – for free.

By using Google Sitemaps to submit your URLs, you help Google's web crawler do a more complete and efficient job of crawling your site. Sitemaps enables you to submit all of your pages to the Google index, and it's particularly useful for making sure that we know about all dynamically generated URLs or pages that are not adequately linked to on your site. But please note: submitting a Sitemap will not guarantee inclusion or influence your PageRank, and isn't a replacement for creating compelling and useful content.

2. Find out how Google sees your site.

Once you've made sure we have access to your site, you can see the common words used to link to your pages and that are seen by Google. This allows you to see trends in your site's content, and can help you determine why you may be ranking for particular keywords. You can also see which page has the highest PageRank by month. Some site owners are surprised to find that this isn't always the home page. If an internal page has the highest PageRank, you might consider spending more time optimizing the ads there.

3. Diagnose potential problems.

We let you know if, and why, we're having trouble accessing your site or specific pages. If we can't crawl a page, we can't index it -- so fixing any errors we list can help improve your overall coverage. If the AdSense Site Diagnostics tool shows that you're blocking pages from MediaPartners-Google (the AdSense crawler), you can use the robots.txt analysis tool of Google webmaster tools to test changes to that file and make sure those changes allow access. You can also see what pages you are blocking from other Google bots -- this lets you experiment with changes to see how they would affect the crawl of your site.

4. Find out which queries drive traffic to your site.

Using Google webmaster tools, learn which Google queries created clickthroughs to your site and where you were positioned in the search results for that query. You can also view data for individual properties and countries as well. For instance, you can see the queries from users searching Google Images in the United States that returned your site in the results. You’ll only see properties and countries for which your site has data.



5. Get re-included.

If your site has disappeared from the search results, read through the Google quality guidelines, then correct any problems on your site and request re-inclusion from your Google webmaster tools account. Please keep in mind that the reinclusion request form is only available to people using Google webmaster tools.

There's more.

Google webmaster tools are evolving, and we frequently add more features. Stay up to date on the newest features with the Google Webmaster Central blog and get your questions answered on the Google Webmaster Help discussion group.

Here's to building a loyal following for your website and, in turn, optimizing your AdSense earnings!

Posted by Vanessa Fox - Product Manager for Google Webmaster Tools

System maintenance this week

Here's a quick heads up from our tech team on system maintenance this week:

Starting at 4am PDT tomorrow, August 23, the AdWords video ad upload tool will be down for maintenance for approximately 48 hours. During this time you will not be able to upload or modify click-to-play video ads in your AdWords account. However, if you've already created a video ad, it will continue to run normally during this time.

Then, on Saturday, August 26th, the AdWords system will be temporarily unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. As with the case mentioned above, though you won't be able to log in or make any changes to your account during this time, your ads will continue to run as normal.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this system maintenance may cause.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Thoughts on "The Modular JRE" and Open Sourcing Java

David Herron posted a clarification of "what it means to be Java" on his blog, and the examples that he used got me thinking...

David made it clear that anyone can add whatever they like to their version of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and still call it Java... but if they leave anything out then it is most certainly not Java. The example he sited was the hypothetical incusion of SWT (the windowing toolkit used by Eclipse) in a version of the JRE. This version could still label itself as Java as long as AWT and Swing (the windowing toolkits in the Java specifications) are not excluded.

This makes sense to me... but I'm hoping that the folks who are opening Java also take another look at the basic definition of what must be in the JRE. Let me explain my concern...

Many Java applications (maybe even most) have no desktop-based user interface at all (they are browser-based web applications)... and if the adoption of Web Services and SOA continue we'll see more and more "headless" Java-implemented Services (Services that have no user interface at all). In a world where it is quite legitimate to have a large percentage of Java applications with zero need for any windowing toolkit, why carry around those toolkits in the JRE?

I know that code that isn't used doesn't really "cost" much, but let's assume that you are really into Grid computing, and you have thousands of nodes in your cluster... and each node has a JRE with unused windowing toolkits on it. Seems wasteful.

Windowing toolkits in the base JRE are fairly easy to throw stones at, but there are many other components that really should be optional. For an example, just take a look at the recent "discussions" on whether or not JavaDB should be included in the Java Developer Kit (I shudder to think of the threads that would be spawned if JavaDB is ever packed into the JRE).

My impression is that there is a large consensus that the JRE should be more modular, broken into logical chunks that are installed based on need. A modular JRE does pose some rather interesting technical challenges (to get the code that you need when you need it), but I had overlooked the challenge posed by the current definition of Java itself.

If I'm reading David right... a modular JRE wouldn't quite meet the current definition for "Java"... it's all or none. If I never install the "windowing-toolkit" chunk on my application servers, then they aren't really "Java" application servers.

Just something to think about...

(cross-posted at my java.net blog)

What does Expedia need with $500mm?

So, Expedia wants to raise US$500mm through unsecured notes issue. What do they need with $500mm? Expedia has been profitable every quarter for the last 5 years.

The press release says

"Expedia plans to use the net proceeds for general corporate purposes, which could include the repurchase of common stock, repayment of debt, acquisitions, investments, additions to working capital, capital expenditures and advances to or investments in its units. "

That is a very generic and boring PR comment. It is possible that this is just a balance sheet clean up with Expedia simply under-leveraged. The more interesting possibility is that they have their eye on some acquisitions to make.

For example there is the 50% of eLong they don't own. That's $170mm or so on current prices - likely much more if an acquisition is mooted.

Maybe the new Australian business needs a marketing boost from buying a local player.

The long mooted plans in Japan could also be expensive and invovle an acquisition.

Could they have their eye on someone in Europe? Who's left there...HRS, Hotels.de, Venere...

Or, the craziest idea of all, maybe Blackstone will hope to spin off part of Travelport into Expedia. That would be fun to see.

Optimization Month, Week 4: Building and understanding your audience

If you've been following this blog for the past three weeks, you've already seen a ton of great tools to make your site as compelling as possible with AdSense...and if you haven't, what are you waiting for? Scroll down and read about all the techniques that we've touted during this Optimization Month. And now that you have all these great tools at your fingertips, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to updating your site. I'll wait until you're finished.

[time passes]

Congratulations! Now your site is ready for all your eager users, but wait ... wouldn't it be great if more people knew about your site and could truly enjoy the fruits of your labor? Of course it would -- that's why this week we'll focus on tips and tricks to drive quality traffic to your site.

We've assembled a team of specialists across Google to enlighten you on the many Google products that can help you optimize your site traffic and content. I've no intention of stealing any of their fire, so I'll simply whet your appetites a bit...

• Find out about the many webmaster tools that can help you inform the Google crawlers about your site.
  
• Make your site available to millions of users at the click of a button.
  
• Learn more about your users, from the pages they're visiting most to the amount of time they spend on your site.

And finally, to end the week we have something extra special. I won't ruin the surprise here, but suffice it to say that it'll be worth the wait.

UPDATED for accuracy

Posted by Boyar Naito - AdSense Optimization Team

The cost of free travel

I gave up on efforts to use my family as a test for booking a holiday offline and went back to booking with frequent flyer miles and calling direct to hotels. Was able to find four free tickets on Qantas to my destination in the South Pacific. However as many of you will know free is not free in frequent flyer tickets. You still have to pay the taxes and charges on a ticket. In the old days this was just the costs imposed by governments and airports to make a trip. However in the new world, airlines have been using this bucket of costs as a place to hide operational costs especially the "fuel surcharge". These costs made my free tickets cost AUD$1,150 or just under $300 per head. I even had to pay $200 plus dollars in charges for my three month old daughter who will spend the entire flight sitting on my lap. As I said to the agent - "this is the most expense free ticket I have ever bought".

Qantas has been extraordinarily aggressive in pushing operational costs into the services and taxes bucket. They recently announced an increase in the fuel surcharge to $185 for Europe $145 for the US and for Asia, Pacific and Honolulu $115 (all up from $98). There is no justifiable accounting reason why the operational cost of fuel is put outside of the cost of the ticket. Fuel in an input cost just like staff, catering, technology etc. If an input costs goes up then Qantas should raise the cost of its tickets to compensate. Why does it make a difference where they charge a customer for extra fuel costs? Three reasons - advertising, frequent flyers and agents. It allows Qantas to advertise lower ticket costs they are not true; it makes frequent flyers (like me) pay more free tickets; and it denies commission to travel agents as they do not make commission on the charges part of the ticket. For a return flight to Europe that can mean as much as $25-50 that an agent does not make on a flight.

Qantas has a right to pass on the increased cost of fuel but by hiding it in the fees and charges section and not the ticket costs it is ripping off agents and annoying frequent flyers.

TRAFFIC TIPS: The Exponential Power of a Marketing Virus

By Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Dear Internet Friend,

The Internet Marketers seeking to harness the power of a simple VIRUS should study the work of political strategists. Both disciplines--viral marketing and politics--are based on the Diffusion Theory: the hypothesis that every successful idea is first embraced by a small group of "influencers" before it spreads to the masses.

Who exactly are these influencers? We call them adoptive connected chatleaders.

* Adoptive

* Connected

* Chatleader

When looking for ACCs, it's important to recognize that they operate at a global, national, regional and local levels. The latter represent the "real virus." These type of techniques it can be difficult to find and engage. But they're also as important...

But the Internet make this process a lot easier, and even give you the chance to change or twist the rules and give you the opportunity to become an innovator, just like Mark Joyner did back in the bigining of the Dot Com Boom that's why he's called "The Godfather Of Internet Marketing" by top direct and internet marketing experts. Now you can get access to Mark Joyner's brain and learn how to get an Extreme Biz Makeover.

Then Corey Rudl the co-founder of The Internet Marketing Center master every marketing tool, and techniques and develop a way to transform "Word of Mouth" into a free automated traffic generator, brand blaster, and viral marketing tool on esteroids.

And now the Internet has created another online marketing innovator, his name Michael Filsaime men who owns a massive income building online businesses, and after testing and improving his new Internet marketing tools and tactics, he created a new viral marketing script and technique that will change the History of Internet Marketing forever...

It's not other tool available on the web that can provide instant stream of results and profits than this. This tool was so good that top Internet marketers and top web designers are paying Mike Filsaime over $1,500 (Click here for more information) to be the first people to put this tactics to the test and the results were...

Wow!... $200,000 in just days.

After all the gossip and massive revenue, Mike Filsaime decide to make part of his marketing secrets available to small businesses, and low budget entrepreneurs. I mean do you think he make enough money selling his unstoppable Internet Marketing Super Virus Manuscripts and secrets after his website was down a few times because of the mountain of traffic he got.

How much you will pay to super charge your sales up to 500% or more? Well, this package of automated sales information can do that and more, maybe that's the reason Mike call his business sales builder in a box invention "The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript". I think Mike is crazy by offering this for less than $100.00, I know is only for the first 125 marketers who take action now. But, still crazy.

• Who don't want to improve their sales?
• Get 1,000's of Opt-In Subscribers in days not years?
• Who don't want to take their Affiliate Sales to the next level?
• Who don't want to BUILD a downline Faster than spelling it?

Well, viral marketing done right can do that and more. Also, will...

• Completely Automate your business
• Do the sales pitch for you
• Attract customers like a sales magnet
• Give you MAXIMUM Branding exposure
• Lower your marketing expenses
• Imporve your cash flow
• And much MORE...

At last, I'll recomemd you to start planning your viral marketing strategy which would work for your business, product or service, that will help you spread the word about your offerings and act as your digital sales person.

All the best...

Luis Galarza, a Business and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates or http://www.Cogni360.com/ . A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs

P.S: Don't forget to ask for the sale or call to action. That's the number one mistake that most sales people make...
.

Photo Tips

Someone told me the other day that she thought I did an excellent job at photographing my items for ebay, and she asked for tips. I had to laugh because I have really struggled, and still do sometimes, to get just the right photo. I did give her a couple of suggestions, though, and thought I would share them here as well.

Tip one is to use a lot of light. We recently bought one of the large silver, dome-shaped, clamp-on lights and got a Reveal by GE lightbulb, which produces a very nice, clean, bright light. I back that up (unless I get lazy) with a second one (one we had, which is smaller) and use a white sheet (most of the time - unless it's a light-colored item and then I use red or dark blue) as a backdrop and surface. Position the lights in such a way to avoid shadows as much as possible.

When you compose the photo, try to fill the frame with the item you're photographing and, most certainly, avoid clutter in the background. Look beyond the item to see what will show, in two dimension, in the background. (Did you ever take a picture then get it back and see a tree growing out of the person's head? The tree was there, in the distance in 3D! You just have to learn to look beyond the subject and see the result, which will be flat.)

What has helped me the most is to use Picasa, the free photo-editing software from Google. It is very easy to use. Even with good light my pictures are still somewhat yellow, so I use the Auto Color feature to level that out, the Auto Contrast if I feel it needs it, then add fill light if necessary. I crop the picture to delete as much of the background as possible and I try to make a vertical aspect, as I mentioned in one of my guides, if I'm going to use the picture as a gallery photo because it takes up more space on the search results page.

There are other solutions for photo problems, including using a purchased or homemade light tent or light box, and I may elaborate on those more later. In the meantime, I hope these couple of hints are useful for you.

Have a great ebay day!

Mothers 7240 California Gold Clay Bar System

Mothers 7240 California Gold Clay Bar System is the ultimate tool to take the right steps in bringing back the shine to your car!



I have used clay on my integra and the difference you will see in how rough the paint is before and after is amazing!





Product Features

• Extends Paint Life
• Safe for all Paints
• Instant Show car shine
• Will remove embedded grains of metal, tree sap, paint overspray
• Includes 80G clay bar, 16oz Showtime Instant Detailer, 4oz original formula Carnauba Cleaner Wax

Customer Reviews:

"After reading numerous raving reviews here at Amazon.com and at several other sites, and learning that auto clay was safe for clear coat paints because it works through a non-abrasive process, I decided to give it a try -- and boy, was I glad I did!



My car was covered with a stubborn deposit of dirt and grime that simply would not come off with a car wash. It seemed that the dirt and grime had gotten lodged in the paint and wouldn't budge no matter how hard I tried washing the car. After every car wash, I would run my fingers through the paint and it would still feel gritty.



That was when I learned about Mothers 07240 California Gold Clay Bar Paint Saving System Kit. The results were astounding! After using it, the paint no longer felt gritty but glassy-smooth. The paint was no longer dulled by contaminants and the car looked like it has a new coat of paint! I was immensely pleased with the results.



Unlike a lot of car polish or polishing compounds that use abrasion to strip away surface contaminants, auto clay simply picks up surface contaminants and locks them into the clay. The clay looks and feels exactly like plasticine (Play-doh) and it is used along with the included "lubricant" spray (actually, an auto soap that provide lots of suds -- like Meguiar's Gold Class -- will work equally well.)



Mind you, car polish still has its place in paint restoration because claying will not remove scratches; only a car polish or a polishing compound (harsher) can do that. And remember, always follow the claying with an application of wax to shield your paint from new contaminants. Also, clay your car every so often and you will keep the paint looking like new!

I am giving Mothers 07240 California Gold Clay Bar Paint Saving System Kit my highest recommendation. Go on, try it and see for yourself firsthand the difference it makes in your car paint. It's worth every penny and I'm sure you'll be glad you did! "

Bryan S "A Music Fan"



Give it a try and see if you can restore that finish on your car with Mothers 7240 California Gold Clay Bar System!



Learn about refinishing your rims in my other blog!

Campaign ended?

Here's another question (slightly edited for length) sent to us by our colleagues on the AdWords Help forum. Since the question comes up a fair amount, they thought it might help a lot of folks if it we answered it here in the blog:

My campaign was going along just fine, but all of a sudden in the Status column, it says something like "Ended July 31, 2006". Why is that? I didn't do anything, and haven't even made any changes at all for at least a couple of weeks. And even more important, how do I get it running again? I'm losing business, and want to get my ads running again!

This occurs when an advertiser has set an 'end date' for their campaign, and then forgets that they have done so. This happens more often than you might expect, but no worries -- the solution is extremely straightforward. You can get re-started in very short order by following the steps right here.

Tip: When you set an end date for a campaign, you may want to make a note of this on your calendar, perhaps a few days in advance of the actual date. This will remind you to reset the end date to a point in the future, if you wish, before your ads come to a screeching halt.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Great data source

Jared Blank at Online Travel Review had a good find - Flightstats.com. Gives you more than usual on-time and date data about flights. You can actually see a rating chart for each flight number that flies a particular route. Don't get me wrong its not like looking at this site is going to amuse you as much as The Onion or keep you as entertained as Defamer but it will feed the planespotter in you.

Search in Style

A boon to academics everywhere, the Chicago Manual of Style chose to use the Google Mini to power search in its first online version, coming out next month. Previously harried college students had to first find the Manual of Style under a pile of laundry then leaf through dog-eared sections to find information. Now they can now get instant information on how to properly cite sources such as online articles without page numbers - making Wikipedia and MySpace the #1 and #2 most popular reference sources for the under 25 set. And because of the Google Mini's automated spell checker, they can even misspell "parenthetical citation." We won't tell their high school English teachers.

Christian's Tips: Getting the most out of AdSense

I hope this week you've discovered a new feature or learned how to improve your use in a way that will benefit your site and your earnings. Today I’m going to share my top 3 tips for getting the most out of AdSense.

As a bonus, my advice will also help you climb the social ladder at your school or workplace. Prepare to grow your revenue...and your popularity.

1. Be friendly with everyone – If you want to be more popular in school, you can’t only get to know the drama students -- you have to make friends with the basketball team, the marching band, and the A/V club too. So many friends competing for your time makes it more valuable, just like more advertisers competing for your ad space makes it worth more. Without opting in to text, image, and video ads, you can't expect to get the most revenue possible for your ad space -- you need more advertisers competing in order to bid up the price of your ads. When the highest-paying advertiser wins, you do too!

2. Look your best – You don’t have to be a beauty queen or a male model to be popular, but you should present yourself as well as possible. To get the most out of AdSense, make your site attractive to advertisers spending site targeting dollars. As Natalie mentioned yesterday, site targeting revenue can have a big impact on your total earnings. When an advertiser checks out your site, let them see great formats, like the medium rectangle, in highly visible above-the-fold placements.

3. Be well rounded – In high school, being a talented football player or a skilled musician makes you interesting. But being a star quarterback who plays first violin, gets straight As, and still finds time to volunteer at the local soup kitchen makes you amazing. If you’re only successful with the standard AdSense ads, it’s time to expand. Try link units, referrals, and AdSense for search and track the results. You might be surprised what your next success will be.

I wish you the best of luck with these AdSense tips -- and hope that this new-found popularity doesn't go to your head!

Posted by Christian Ashlock - AdSense Optimization Team

MONEY TIPS: Absolutely No Software Needed?

From: Luis Galarza "The Success Guy" Blog

Hi everyone,

Butterfly Marketing proves to be just as powerfulin strategies then in the software itself. Below you will find a student and customer of the course.

Click Here To Learn More About This Manuscript

Michael Cheney of "Adsense Videos" applied the the pre-launch strategies and affiliate tools and JV strategies outlined in Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Marketing Manuscript to the his launch.
Here is what Michael Cheney had to say about what he learned in the Manuscript:

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"Mike - first off I just want to say thank you so much!

The techniques I learned from Butterfly Marketing played a BIG part in helping me make $63,249 in sales in 24 hours!!

As I write this I'm still finding it hard to believe. It seems a lifetime ago that the BFM package landed on my doorstep and I started poring over it with my smile getting larger and wider with each new insight as I realized that as long as I APPLIED what I was learning the principles were going to make something BIG happen!

Little did I know just HOW BIG it would be when I launched AdSense Videos...

AdSense Videos - 33 Hours After Launch..

The site went live. My life changed forever - seriously the results have been incredible Mike - we've grossed over $200,000 in 7 days!! The site got an Alexa ranking on Launch Day of 351!
AdSense Videos was ranked Number 1 on the ClickBank Marketplace in the Marketing category just 4 days afterthe Launch!

I've also been getting, on average, one new subscriber every minute of every hour for the past SIX AND A HALF DAYS!!!

So - What did I learn from you Mike and from Butterfly Marketing? Where to start! I think one of the biggest things was the step-by-step approach. Everything I created for Affiliates, Joint Venture partners and for people going through the videos themselves has been step-by-step. I made everything as easy as I could and 'muppet-proof' as I like to call it!

I also realized that it's paying attention to the smallerdetails BEFORE launch that really pay dividends AFTER the Launch. And BOY am I seeing that!

You gave some absolute gems of advice in Butterfly Marketing which have, without a shadow of a doubt, contributed in a big way to the overall success of AdSense Videos.

Thanks again!

Michael Cheney"
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You too can have the same results as Michael Cheney by implementing the tactics and strategies outlined in Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Marketing Manuscript.

Learn why people are saying that this report changed theway marketing is done on the internet for good!

Click here to read the complete report

To your success,

Luis Galarza, a Business and Telecommunication Consultant & CEO of Cogni360 and Associates or http://www.Cogni360.com/ . A proud member of The International Association of Home Business Entrepreneurs
.