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I’m testing out the “Blog This” feature on Flock. Anyway, check out this funny video spoof of Extreme’s “More Than Words”.

YouTube - Bazaarvoice “More Than Words”

And here’s the original just for comparison…

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It’s about time! Now you can finally do away with getting the paper checks and get your Clickbank payments direct into your bank account. Log in to your account and read the news release from July 15th.

Technorati Tags: Clicbank, direct deposit

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Type “Google Insights” into Google and you will find that they have a sponsored link right on the top of the page even though they are ranked at the top. Does Google get to advertise for free on it’s own search engine? Can you beat Google for the top ad position by bidding for the same phrase?

Just wondering…

Anyway, Google Insights is a pretty nifty tool for doing market research. Just for illustration, I just did a search comparison for “John McCain” vs. “Barack Obama” and look at the results.

You can also get results for regional searches. It looks like USA is where most of the searches are coming from (no surprise there) but in second place is Iraq followed by Canada. It also shows you related search terms and searches that are becoming popular or “rising searches” as they call it.

If you click on USA, you’ll actually be able to see the results broken down by state. This data would be great for political strategists.

Click on a state and you can even drill down by cities.

Check this out for Alabama on the McCain vs. Obama search.

(Another hint: If you log on to your Google account, you’ll see numbers which are scaled to the total amount of searches over the time period selected)

For marketers, it’ll also be a valuable tool to search for regional demand and if you’re running PPC campaigns, you can adjust your ads accordingly.

You can also find new keywords by looking at the suggested related keywords shown in the results. If you expand the time scale you can also check out the seasonality of certain topics or products.

Go ahead and spend some time playing around with this free tool.

Technorati Tags: Google Insights, market research, keyword research

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I only browsed through this article quickly but it looks like a good guide about buying and selling websites, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

If you’re developing a site or looking to sell one of your existing sites, this would give you some ideas about how much your site is worth.

Technorati Tags: website valuation

Popularity: 4% [?]

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I took three weeks off traveling to Malaysia and Singapore. Now I’m back and recharged! It’s crucial to take some time off to relax both your mind and body.

Here are a few items to take note of.

AffSpy is now open to the public in beta. You can compare different affiliate programs that are offered by several affiliate networks. Sometimes more than one network carries the offer so you can pick and choose from the one that offers the highest payout. It would be nice if they also include programs from places like CJ, Linkshare and Shareasale. Currently, the participants are most of the major pay-per-lead type affiliate networks like CPA Empire, NeverblueAds, etc. Still it’s a nice tool if you need to do payout/promotion type, i.e. ppc vs. email vs. web, comparisons.

Ed Dale’s 30 day challenge has kicked off. Although this free training is aimed more for beginners, even seasoned marketers can pick up some good tips. The videos are very well produced although the resolution could be better. Check it out if you haven’t seen it already.

In particular, I’ve been playing around with the Market Samurai research tool. It lets you scope out keywords and the competition based on AdWords and SEO data.

Technorati Tags: AffSpy, 30 Day Challenge, Market Samurai

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Nice videos, John. But you seem a bit more formal than the presentations in the original Traffic Secrets.

If you haven’t seen the new Traffic Secrets 2.0 videos, you should take a look at them. This is the third video but you will also find the links to the first two videos.

The third video is about creating software such as online apps and widgets. As you know, you don’t have to be a programmer to do this. You can outsource the work. John mentions a few good tips about things to watch out for when you’re outsourcing.

Technorati Tags: Traffic Secrets 2.0

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Great news! As of a couple of days ago, Google’s External Keyword Tool now finally shows actual numbers rather than just the relative search volume.

Take a look:

You will see that the approximate search volume for the previous month and the average search volume will change if you change the keyword matching options from broad to phrase to exact match.

This data will provide more insight for internet marketers who want to assess a niche before entering it. It is also a good way to scope out new keywords for either SEO or PPC.

Another thing you can do is target a specific country’s searches. This can provide good insight if you are selling to a specific country.

Other Google tools you can use for research include their Ad Planner (ask for a beta invite), Google Trends, and Trends for Websites. Ad Planner looks like a tool that will let you research content network ad placement. There’s also speculation that someday it will get integrated into AdWords.

Technorati Tags: Google External Keyword Tool, keyword research, market research

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