If you are following “the” Internet Marketing Masterminds you certainly have been overwhelmed by the large amount of free quality information that was given away prior to following product launches lately.

I am talking about the following launches:

• SMARTS (↑) from StomperNet
  Pulled off the market for strategic reasons soon after the launch (the story is quite long, I don't really want to blog about it.)
  
  
• Internet Marketing Explained (↑) from Armand Morin
  Homestudy course, still available; it's not limited in quantities sold as far as I know.
  
  
• Masscontrol (↑) from Frank Kern
  30 day class, limited to about 500 people,
  sold out in less than an hour at a ticket price of about 2,000 $

Now, look at the Alexa graphs (screenshot on 2008 Feb 03)

Having the Blogrush widget displayed on your blog can mean two things:

1. You are getting thousands of additional visitors a week.
2. You are loosing visitors, because they find the headlines as advertised on Blogrush more compelling than yours.

Looks like nothing to gain, you get more visitors, but you also might loose visitors. Well, that's not exactly what happens. You could be afraid of loosing visitors with any form of monetization. Be it AdSense (that I just wrote about in the last post), banner ads, affiliate links and banners, …, etc.

“Keep your headlines ‘hot’ and your content valuable!”

That's the best and only medicine that should be prescribed to keep and extend your readership.

Every once in a while I click on a title (in the Blogrush widget) myself that seems to be kind of interesting, but most often I get disappointed.

“A title alone is not enough of an indicator to signal, if a post or a blog is worthwhile visiting. In the majority of cases it is not.”

The review based listings of Digg, Stumble, Propeller, and Co. are much more useful.

That's why I don't blame my readers for not clicking themselves away from my Blog via Blogrush.

To answer the above question: Blogrush does not lead my readers away. So it does not hurt me, as well as I don't really benefit from it. I actually should start looking for a better use of that screen real-estate.

Some major A-Blogs still show Blogrush, probably because they got a huge referral network that works better for them.

It was a hype, it's days are counted and if you look at John Reese's Blog. Not much going on there. Didn't he promise a promotion network for “hot topics”? I think he did.

The classic theorem of physics seems to withstand the test of time in the Internet Age, too.

“No output, without any input!”

Displaying someone's widget — the Blogrush widget — doesn't solve your traffic problems. There must be more action going on.

Yours
John W. Furst

Using Social Media can be a disappointing experience. Especially with Digg.com. The Digg community has earned itself the reputation of being very strict with their submission guidelines. If they sense that you might spamming, they bury your post quicker than you would know and your whole account could be seized (deactivated) overnight.

Just do a search on Google, Yahoo, or MSN for banned by digg to see the magnitude of that issue.

Search Engine	Phrase	# of results
google.com (↑)	banned by digg	908,000
search.yahoo.com (↑)		16,000,000
search.live.com (↑) (MSN)		1,980,000

The numbers are quite impressive. You are out of luck, when you try to game Digg. Nevertheless, Digg as well as other Social Networking sites are important

• for attracting additional targeted traffic to your site
• and for getting high page rank links from the authority sites - the Social Bookmarking sites themselves.

Personally I was not too good with Digg last year, meaning I did not attract much attention among Digg users. StumbleUpon.com (↑) worked far better for me.

That's only 1 reason , why I can not take credit for any list of tips about how to be successful with digg. Another reason is that there is already such a list out on the Blog-o-sphere, and it has quite an impressive 4292 Diggs (as I write this). It received all those Diggs within 13 hours. Yes, I call that impressive.

If you are interested — and you should be — how to become popular on Digg, read the following article that explains all — the not dirty at all — tricks.

Top 10 Reasons Why This List Will Be Popular on Digg (↑)
on Mixed Market Arts (↑)

What is your opinion on Digg? Is it working for you. Lease your comment below.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: It's good to be back. Welcome at my 1^st post of the year 2008.

Are you heading for #1 rankings on Google, MSN, and Yahoo? You should, because it definitely helps your business. However, it is only one part of the equation for a successful Internet presence. In the following I'll tell you how I got it, but probably more important I'll tell you about the other factors needed as well. A #1 ranking on any search engine is meaningless unless those other factors are in place, too.

You might have “heard” the recent stories about quick rankings from online videos. I thought I have to test it and it was a happy coincidence that Rich Schefren's 66 second video contest came along at the same time. What a great opportunity to get started.

At first look at the search results page “Number 1 on Google” for the broad matching phrase attention ebiz (Enlarge the thumbnail in the upper left corner of this post). I made this screen shot yesterday. Today, I am on position #2.

You also will notice the ^2nd, indented search result. That mainly comes from having a good internal linking strategy on this blog and the fact that the key word “attention” appears on every singe page of this blog. That's how I have setup the promotion for the Attention Age Doctrine. I'll talk more about this later.

Welcome to the December 3, 2007 edition of Webmaster Articles Blog Carnival!



My name is John and I am your host. This edition is packed with a great variety of articles. You'll meet “old friends”, as well as new fellows in the carnival scene. I am hosting this carnival for the first time, and I was pretty much impressed by the high quality of the submitted posts and Blogs. No problem with Spam Blogs (Splogs) at all. Might be the technology part of this carnival that doesn't attract so many spammers as compared to the business related carnivals.

Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Each of the 41 articles below is handpicked. I suggest that you do not only look at the articles, look at those Blogs, too. I have found a lot of great recent posts on those Blogs, too. Check it out. Maybe this carnival should be run at least every month. My comments are open, so just say what you think.

Question of the day: Who will be the next host for this carnival?

Write a note to the organizer (↑).
Get more exposure for your Blog
Volunteers preferred.

You also can submit your article to the next edition already. More info at the bottom of this post.

We have the following categories today: Design, Monetization, Traffic-Building, and General

Because it works [period].

That's kind of too short an answer. So let's start from scratch and define what a White Paper is and what it can do for your business. By the way it does not matter if it is B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer) marketing what you are doing. A White Paper works in any situation. However, the tonality, the voice, the look and feel will be different.

• A White Paper offers your prospect solutions to their problems.
  
  
• It makes the reader curious about what you have to offer.
  
  
• It features a strong call to action to “talk” to you.
  
  
• It shows your expertise, but it's not a sales pitch, not a disguised product brochure, it does not “talk” about how great you or your company is.
  
  
• Most importantly: A White Paper must not be boring. It is not a dry technical document, nor thesis.

Offering free White Papers is part of a strategic education based marketing approach that sets you apart from many competitors. By offering information that focuses on the problem of the prospects, you gain trust, credibility, expert status (if the White Paper is written properly).

For example, if you sell some sort of Time Management Software Tools, you should advertise a White Paper on Time Management. That way you get a shot in setting the buying criterion for Time Management Software. I am assuming that you are selling a high quality software product.

Teach the prospect about Time Management, teach what kind of tools could be helpful with Time Management, and write about what features such good software should have and how to use it. However, don't forget the White Paper must not be too long. It's one piece in your marketing effort.

Buy setting the buying criterion properly you can make your product stand out.

Usually you get terrific response, when advertising problem-solving information and you also build your credibility as a quality source of information, instead of “just another peddler.”

If you want to learn more about White Papers, check out what my colleague Perry Marshall does. He is an expert in his field of Guerrilla - White Paper - and AdWords Marketing (↑).



Have A Nice Weekend
Yours
John W. Furst

I admit, I click the “Stumble! Button” every once in a while, and find some curious things from time to time.

Today, I came across the

“Tallest Virtual Real Estate Building In The World”

The thumbnail of this post shows it's base. My first associations were:

• Is it Web Art or a form of Advertising?
  
  
• Since you can rent a virtual apartment in this tower, it's more a form of advertising, but it certainly has some art-factor, too.
  
  
• What do you think?
  Leave a comment and let us know.

I have set up my Stumble Preferences that I get Web content related to my business as well as my hobbies, like photography.


For anybody that does not know what the “Stumble! Button” is:

The homepage of StumbleUpon.com is the entry point to a large virtual community, whose members discover, comment and vote for Web pages. Currently there are 3,864,876 Stumblers.

The free StumbleUpon Toolbar for FireFox and Internet Explorer becomes your steering wheel for exploring sites other Stumblers liked. Channel surf the Internet with the StumbleUpon toolbar to find great websites, videos, photos and more based on your interests. StumbleUpon learns what you like and makes better recommendations every time you click the Stumble Button.

It's a virtual social network and you can connect to your online friends easily and share your discoveries, meet new people that have similar interests, and check out what other people are discovering.

Most importantly, by default your preferences are set to “family safe”, which is a good thing in those decadent days.

Check it out: www.StumbleUpon.com

P.S.: If you like this article, stumble it with the icon below. If you are not registered yet, register, it's fun and being an active Stumbler will also bring more traffic to your Web site.