| LED Digest 2048: Are International Payments Essential? |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. November 17, 2005 Issue #2048 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ===================== --== Project Management Tools ==-- ~ Beth Durkee "Any LED-ers out there using a great tool?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Greenzapper & International Payments ==-- ~ Brad Waller "Is it a problem not being able to pay "globally"? --== AdWords vs Overture PPC ==-- ~ Don Baker "Research has shown that MSN converts PPC best..." --== Where to Start? ==-- ~ Noah Masterson "...your content is the most important driver of traffic." ~ Steve Pronger "The place to start is with keyword research tools." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Google Droppings ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson ~ Michael Martinez --== Internet Advertising Awards ==-- ~ Bill Rice ======== NEW ==================================== From: Beth Durkee Subject: Project Management Tool I'd be interested to hear recommendations on software to help creatives track projects online. I've just begun the search and I'm blown away by the broad range of products offered out there. My basic requirement would allow me to post projects my company is working on, assign tasks to other members of my team, track progress, track billable time, and invoice. A reporting feature would be great, too, if I wanted to print a more detailed, itemized invoice for a client. I use QuickBooks for my bookkeeping needs but I need something more robust for overall project management. Any LED-ers out there using a great tool? I'd appreciate your insight into online tools you're using and why you like them or don't like them. Thanks, Beth Durkee Eyeland Creations Your Design Consultants for Print and Web Communications www.eyelandcreations.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Brad Waller Subject: Greenzapper (International Payments) I have not heard of GreenZap either, but I noticed one of their selling points was that they are a "global online payment solution provider." I've been quite comfortable accepting PayPal and credit cards, and paying affiliates with PayPal and checks in US funds sent through the mail. But it seems that AdJungle is getting quite a few international clients and I have had requests to hold payments to Israel since it was not worthwhile for a small check, and for egold from a user in Ukraine. This is still a small minority of users and I don't know if we will lose any business if we don't change. But, this list can be a great resource for these types of questions. Is it a problem not being able to pay "globally"? Is egold, greenzap, or some other solution the answer? Who in the US has been using one of these services to pay international customers and has it been a good choice? Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Donald L. Baker Subject: PPC > In my experience, you get more clicks for the $$ > from Adwords, but the rate of conversion is much > more volatile - and ultimately slower - than Overture's. > True? False? Anecdotal at best? - Noah Masterson, LED 2046 Research has shown that MSN (now on YSM/Overture, but converting over to its own adCenter in coming months) converts PPC best, followed by Yahoo and then by Google. The flip side is that Google has the best tools for tweaking / improving your PPC ads and gathering valuable data on KWs and conversions. Therefore, the best use of PPC funds is to set up & finetune your PPC in Google, then roll out the most successful ads on the YSM/Overture network to get the higher clickthrough rate. Don Baker NSI Partners ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Noah Masterson Subject: Starting > I am setting up a new website to sell maternity wear. > I don't know where to start to get people to come to > my website. Any suggesitions are greatly appreciated. - LilianPhuong Dang, LED 2044 As people on this list will tell you, your content is the most important driver of traffic. I imagine there are plenty of other maternity-wear websites out there, so what can you offer that is new and different? Do you have any expertise in pregnancy? Could you provide regular tips on dealing with morning sickness, mood swings, post-partum depression, etc.? Or do you know of other online resources with which you could partner to syndicate content? At www.dc-baby.com, we rolled out a blog several months before the release of our book. Because of its original content, the website became a destination for DC-area parents. Now we have a built-in audience, along with a respectable e-mail list, and we were able to sell advance copies of the book before it was available in stores. So my point is...content, content, content! If you don't have the resources to generate lots of content (and it's really hard to do, I know), I think the earlier suggestion of an eBay store was a good one. You might also try some pay-per-click advertising through Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, although you're in a very competitive field. Noah Masterson www.dc-baby.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Starting > Unless you have a godzillion bucks to offer to > all of LED's SEO dieties, the far more productive > and thousands smaller cost is "off-line advertising." - Bill Davison, LED 2046 You don't actually need a godzillion bucks Lilian. I'm not dismissing the usefulness of offline marketing (of an online business), but presumably you're looking for suggestions on how to build traffic to your site ONLINE. Of course that means getting found in the search engines. You can do that with paid listings, or start by targeting the "low hanging fruit". That simply means targeting keyword phrases that are actually being search for but have little or no competition. The place to start is with keyword research tools. There are many available. I use Keywords Analyzer and Wordtracker. For example, here is what I found out using Wordtracker... "maternity wear italy" was searched for 40 times in the last 130 days (according to the Wordtracker database). Not a lot, I grant you. But, there are only 37 competing sites on Google, as opposed to 1,290,000 for "maternity wear". Which do you think will be easier to rank well for? Is it better to rank highly on keywords that are actually being searched for, than nowhere on high-competition keywords? Of course it is! You may not get high volumes from that particular keyword phrase, but you'll get real, targeted traffic. So, you devote a page of your site to "maternity wear italy". You put those keywords in the page title, the heading and in the body text. Then build another page devoted to another low-competition keyword phrase. Keep building more pages which target the "low hanging fruit". Lots of pages which deliver low volumes of targeted traffic for a single keyword phase = lots of targeted traffic for many different keywords. As your sites grows and you develop your links, you'll find you'll start to rank well on some of the higher-competition keywords. Using those keyword analysis tools you'll find plenty of good targets. Here's another I found using Keywords Analyzer... "old navy maternity wear" had 671 searches on Overture (Yahoo) last month but has only 247 competing sites (using exact matching). At this stage of your site development forget about all the esoteric stuff that fills pages on forums like this. Concentrate on the basics, and the basics always start with research. Cheers Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Google Droppings > And several people have indicated that, of their > sites which rely extensively on reciprocal linkage, > all seem to have remained sunk deep in the > search results. - Michael Martinez, LED 2047 Here we go again, folks. The reciprocal link morticians are writing the obituaries again. Singing their durges. Digging the graves. This has happened with every Google update over the last several years. It is happening again. The SEO world is once again filled with "reciprocal links are dead" babble. It's all very predictable. ONCE AGAIN...just look at some real search results...lots of them, before jumping to conclusions. We do reciprocal link work for hundreds of sites. We use subject relevant, non-gamesmanship reciprocal linking methods. It seems that fewer than 5% of our clients were affected by Jagger. Of those that were, we saw evidence of other factors at play. Many of our clients who continue to hold top place positions for their main keywords rely almost entirely on reciprocal links for their link popularity. What's more, many of the sites that were displaced in Google were replaced by sites that use... gasp...reciprocal links!!! Certainly, link seems to have played a role in this update. Raw linking games got hit pretty hard. But subject relevant, non-gamesmanship reciprocal linking is still a very valid method of promoting a website. The noise out there is massive. Everyone is an expert. Don't take my word for it, or theirs. Just look at real Google search results. The reciprocal linkers are still right there, at the top. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com djohnson, domaindrivers.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Google droppings > So, putting all these indications together, I feel that Google has > found a way to determine if your backlinks come from similarly > structured pages. Think of it as Google stripping away most of the > content to look at how the pages are built. They figured out how > to filter fake directories in their July 2005 update. Now they > seem to have a means for identifying a page structure. Hence, > if all your links come from a homogenous class of sites (only > directories, or only reciprocal links, or only autogenerated > content, etc.), Google seems to understand this. - Michael Martinez, LED 2047 Today I read an interesting comment on a blog I occasionally follow. The blogger is attending (or following) the WebmasterWorld PubCon 10 conference in Las Vegas this week. Matt Cutts, the popular Google engineer who also has a blog (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/) is a guest at the conference. The comment I read suggests that Matt said Google has found a way to kill automated reciprocal linking (that is my wording, not anyone else's). I've been unable to find a confirming report on other sites, but usually it can take people up to a week to post conference reports. The blogger who is my source subscribes to this list but if he is at the conference he may not be able to reply to this post before next week. I don't want to put anyone in a bad position in case the comment is not what I have reported it to be. Nonetheless, as many people have alleged that their reciprocal linking may have hurt their rankings in this update, if Matt really did make such a clear-cut assertion, I think a lot of people will have to reassess their search engine strategies. I have no doubt that the link management providers who subscribe to this list will have some thoughts on the subject. My intent is not to engage in rumor mongering, but rather to share information in as timely a fashion as possible. I'm sorry, Adam, but given the digest's somewhat sporadic schedule of late, I thought it would be best to post this now rather than later. I will be traveling the week of Thanksgiving (November 21 - 26) anyway, so I may not be able to followup next week. Michael Martinez, Author Understanding Middle-earth, Parma Endorion, and Visualizing Middle-earth http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: William Rice Subject: Internet Advertising Awards The Web Marketing Association is now accepting entries for the 2006 Internet Advertising Competition Awards. The IAC Awards are the first and only industry-based advertising award competition dedicated exclusively to online advertising. Awards will be presented within each of the industry categories and advertising formats such as online ad (including banner, pop-up or interstitial) , rich media online ad , email message, online newsletter campaign, microsite/landing page, integrated ad campaign and of course ads the client didn't choose. All will be judged on creativity, innovation, impact, design, copywriting, and use of the medium. The Competition Web site is located at www.iacaward.org and the deadline for entry is January 31, 2006. Bill Rice Web Marketing Association ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls." - Epicurus |
