Rob Brown

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Wondering What Happened With The Austin Plane Crash?

Apparently, the pilot wanted to commit suicide.

Video and a clear summary explanation here:
http://www.mahalo.com/plane-crash-austin

More info on the pilot:
http://www.mahalo.com/joseph-andrew-stack

Have You Seen The Crazy Videos From Shawn White at the Olympics?

If you've known me for any amount of time, you know that I've spent more than my fair share of time on a Ski hill. To this day, I think that I'll end up retired filling the role as the obigatory crazy old Instructor that every hill has or as a Patrol who enjoys my mornings carving first tracks in the snow when the sun comes up.

Until that day, I live vicariously through others and this week, Shaun White didn't let me down. Check out these crazy videos from the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The IOC and NBC have been taking down videos left right and center, so check them all out here:

http://www.mahalo.com/shaun-white-olympics-2010-video

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

What is AdSense Smart Pricing?

Smart Pricing is Google's term for protecting itself and AdSense advertisers. In short, people who spend money to advertise with Google AdSense want as many people to click their ads as possible. Measured as a Click Through Ratio (CTR), many AdSense advertisers work hard to change the words and graphics they use in their ads to encourage people to click. Every time that a website visitor views an ad and that ad isn't clicked, the CTR decreases.

In April of 2004, Google introduced Smart Pricing to help AdSense advertisers combat poor CTR. Here is Google's news archive announcing Smart Pricing:

https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/adwords/select/news/sa_mar04.html

Google constantly monitors the productivity of AdWords ads. When your website has a high number of readers, but a low number of ad clickers, Google has two choices: Display fewer ads or decrease amount of money they pay you for displaying those ads. In my experience, Google first tries to decrease the number of targeted ads. If that doesn't work, then, they apply Smart Pricing and decrease the amount of money they pay you to display ads.

In the eyes of an advertiser, this is good. While advertisers spend a lot of time thinking about CTR, they live and die in the amount of money that an ad makes. As a result, if their CTR goes down but their overall income goes up, advertisers (and Google) are happy.

As a side note, it's important to realize that Click Through Rates do not influence the Return On Investment. Google uses CTR to measure the quality of traffic and as a foundation to the formulas used to calculate ROI results such as eCPM (Effective Cost Per Thousand).

<b>How Does Smart Pricing Happen</b>

Smart Pricing is a simple function of traffic. If your website visitors do not click on ads, Google will eventually lock your site into Smart Pricing.

Commonly, these websites find themselves locked into smart pricing when they start to gain traffic:

Forums
Article Websites
General Interest Websites
Blogs with high retention rates
Web based applications

Google starts every site out on a high paying, level playing field. As traffic (website visitors) grow, Google constantly measures the quality of that traffic. If people are clicking ads, Google leaves your ad pricing alone as you continue on your happy way. However, when a community is engaged (as with forums) or when you purchase traffic (as with general interest websites) or even when you simply have regular visitors (as with blogs and web apps), people click on fewer ads. Google sees this and applies Smart Pricing to decrease the amount of money you make per click and protect the ROI of their advertiser.

<b>How To Solve Google Smart Pricing</b>

Step 0:
Improve the CTR's that Google Advertisers receive.
You'll notice a that this is solution number 0. That's because this is a very difficult, if not impossible thing to do. This solution requires that you edit not only your content, but you need to edit the ads of the Google Ads customers and perhaps even the website of Google's customers. This isn't a real solution, but it highlights the underlying Smart Pricing problem.

Step 1: Identify Your Best Content
Use Adsense Channels to find out what pages are generating clicks. Here is more information about Google Channels: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=9868

Step 2: Remove All Google Ads From Your Site
Switch to another ad network for at least 30 days. I suggest using this opportunity to check out a variety of other ad networks or perhaps even try to broker your own private deal with advertisers. You have enough traffic for Google to care what you do, maybe you have enough for real advertisers to care too.

Step 3: Place Ads Only on Specific Pages
After you purge all of the Google Ads from your site and you wait for at least a full cycle to pass, then place Google Ads only (and this is important) only on the pages that you identified in step 1. You want people to click on those Google ads and since you know which pages they were clicking on before, you increase your chances of Google recording CTR numbers with ads only on those pages.

Step 4: Work on Your Traffic
The last thing to do is to be consciously aware of your traffic. If you have a website that targets a wide, general audience, ensure that you have enough outstanding, high quality niche content to offset global click through ratios. In short, if you have a lot of crappy pages, you're going to have a lot of crappy traffic. If you regularly buy traffic or use supplemental or purchased traffic for anything other than breaking out of a plateau, you're going to have crappy traffic. Google will again protect itself from your crappy traffic and your time will be wasted if you do not improve your sources of traffic in this continual step.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

An SEO Tip: Why video and emerging social networks are important

I really enjoy the "game" of online marketing. There is an entire subculture of players and a game that extends across the entire world. That being said, I couldn't imagine relying on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a primary form of marketing. These days, I see it more as a tool than anything else.

I’m adding this tip to this in depth SEO resource: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-seo-your-website

This year will mark the implementation of cumulative logic to determine relevance in search results. This isn't news for anyone following search engine trends. From Twitter to Facebook to almost every major source of traffic online, search engines such as Google and Bing are more and more relying on human powered patterns to figure out what a human is searching for.

With this in mind, I have noticed something that smart folks are doing on video sharing sites such as Youtube.

Here's how it works:

1)
Start with a video. As with any content, the better the quality, the more productive the traffic will be.

2)
Create a high quality, informative, video. For example, if you're working with an independent restaurant, create a high quality video that revolves around the keywords you're trying to match. If you're using this strategy in volume, low quality videos will work, they just won't be as productive.

3)
Here's the part where the rubber meets the road. First, identify all of the Tube / video sites that accept video submissions. Youtube, etc. Next, keyword every available field. Don't just stuff keywords - treat each of these fields like the title tag in html. Next, submit, submit, submit. Submit this keyworded, interesting video everywhere you can.

3)
Last, post the video on your site with relevant and connected text. Post it everywhere that is even closely related. In my restaurant example: The main page, menu page, heck even on your keyworded 404 page. Hopefully, this video will add value to your readers too - remember that video significantly improves CTR, time on site and lowers bounce rates.

Why this works:

Increasingly, search engines are combining sources to determine relevance. Relevance very clearly equals higher rankings. Since there isn't a lot of competition on video sites for a wide variety of keywords and terms, it's possible to become influential and add a tool to your SEO and marketing toolboxes.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Monday, January 4, 2010

Simple Business = Good Business

I live in a small town 45 minuets outside of Toronto. Sometimes, this works to my advantage (lower taxes, less traffic, nice folks). Other times, it doesn't (fewer services, few restaurants, expensive groceries).

What is not unusual is for me to walk into a small local store, be greeted with a smile and asked how the person can help me. Without ulterior sales training, the person just simply and honestly wants to help me.

Today, I found an example of simple, good business in an unexpected location. A new pizza place opened up and I decided to give it a try. The owner is from "the big city" and he reminded me of a "small town" simple business lesson.

Give people stuff for free and they will like you.

The new pizza guy knows he's new. He's nice, outgoing and has that "new franchisee" buzz about him. Of his own accord and out of his own budget, he's giving people stuff to make them like him.

Here's what he's doing:

1)
When a new customer phones in an oder, it is taken just like any other pizza shop.

2)
When you go in, you're greeted with a small town smile and a friendly "Hello".

Nothing new yet. You're a new customer and your order is ready - perfect.

3)
What comes next is genius. The owner opens up the pizza after taking your money and says something like "this pizza is a bit overdone" or "there aren't enough pepperoni" on this pizza. I can have a new one ready for you in 5 minuets and you can take this one at no charge. Brilliance.

4)
What my big city turned small town business person has told me with this one pseudo promotion is: He cares about his product, he is a perfectionist, he is friendly, he does what I want, he is more concerned with my happiness than the cost of his product, and best of all - he knows that people talk.

So there you have it. An insignificant new pizza shop owner that taught me a lesson about fundamental customer service. If only Facebook applied these principles or what about Ford. I'm not saying give away the farm, but DO THINGS that SHOW PEOPLE what you're made of. Pizza or not.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Blippy - Is This the Evolution of Twitter?

Twitter has a long way to go before it reaches the natural end of it's life. However, new service Blippy is prophesying that end by refining Twitter into a niche appeal service. Blippy is revolutionary because no other online service has given someone the ability to publicly track all of their purchases and the purchases of their friends in real time.

What is Blippy and how does it work?

After receiving a Blippy Invite Code, you're asked to link the accounts you have at stores such as iTunes, Amazon, Zappos, Netflix, Godaddy and others. You can also link a credit card or bank account.

Linking an account allows Blippy to monitor your purchases. Similar to tweeting, the purchases in your linked account can be viewed by your Blippy "friends" to be commented on and reviewed.

Here's why Blippy is cool:

You might be thinking to yourself, "OMG - I don't want anyone to know about my Netflix rental history"; that's what I thought too until I used Blippy. Blippy's purpose isn't to monitor all of your purchases. Rather, Blippy wants to tell your audience "look at how cool I am, I just bought this".

It's scary to think that people will know what you buy when and for how much, but this initial fear is one of the reasons that I think Blippy will succeed. The shock value is enough to get a few early adopters into the system and the community that is forming shows the value in giving Blippy and the general public a view of your purchases.

Beyond showing people what you bought, Blippy takes point from Twitter by showing your friends what you purchased. However, it gets interesting when people start to comment on your purchases and discuss them. Again, this sounds intimidating, but check this out:

See what's happening there? Some Internet noob named Jason Calacanis purchased a new camera to take the best photos possible of his new daughter. He purchased the camera, broadcasted his Amazon purchase on Blippy and opened a conversation about it. What followed was some very sound advice on lenses and even a note by some other unknown guy, Leo Laporte.

How cool is that, right? We know what someone we like purchased, where, for how much and Blippy friends got to have a conversation about it. Beyond the shock value of having instanat access to what we buy and when we buy it, Blippy will live or die in these types of conversations and interactions people like Jason and Leo have with their audiences.

Of course, this isn't without problem. Similar to Twitter, the user interface of the Blippy conversation limits the depth of what people are saying. After Leo said to Jason, "[You] should have bought the 5D. Seriously.", Jason started a question on Mahalo Answers asking how his camera was different that resulted in significantly deeper, well researched answers.

What do I think about Blippy?

I mentioned at the start that Blippy is the evolution of Twitter. In it's current state, that's exactly what I think about it. When a product or service reaches critical mass, competitors break the market leader apart into smaller services tailored for specific functions. Online, this is called "niche market product creation" and is exactly what Blippy is doing.

Blippy could have easily been marketed as a Twitter API based App service that allowed people to broadcast the details of their retail purchases to their Twitter friends. By developing their own niche microblogging social network based on purchases, they're taking a risk that could pay off. If heavy social mavens such as Laporte and Calacanis attract their friends and fans to have conversations, this could become a very interesting project. Years down the road, the obvious "end game" for Blippy goes one of two ways. Either Twitter buys them after they have ammased enough regular conversation that Blippy becomes powerful or they quickly monitize with the retail companies that they interact with. The less obvious path (and the one my money is on) is that a smaller credit card company (not Visa) will buy Bilppy for access to the data and to use as a marketing tool to differentiate their product from larger competitors.

Check out Blippy. Grab a beta invite code and sign up. My crystal ball says that we're going to start to see a lot of integrated services similar to Blippy in the near future.

Posted via web from Rob Brown

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Apple Tablet Announcement

Apple has reserved the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco in late January. Many people are hyothesizing that Apple will release a tablet computer.

The Apple tablet has been anticipated for almost 2 years now. With soft compeition from the now defunct CruchPad, the Apple Tablet (possibly called the iSlate) is expected to debut on January 26th at the largest Apple event since September.

I'm interested in the Apple tablet. I think that a touch tablet driven with a clean, simple operating system has the capability to be a game changing device similar to the iPod. With applications ranging from educational tools to simply advancing entertainment, an Apple tablet could become what the Apple TV always hoped to be.