List Profit Email Marketing Blog

I’m sure you have heard how social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn have taken off like rocket ships. And maybe you’ve also heard that smart marketers are setting up profiles on those sites, and using them to “brand” themselves and their businesses.

It’s a powerful model, and a big chunk of the Web 2.0 movement, which also includes things like Squiddoo and similar sites, as well as the big social bookmarking sites.

One drawback to the whole web 2.0 thing, however, is the amount of time that it takes to post to all of those sites, and maintain contact with all of your friends.

Now, someone has finally solved that problem!

This “new kid on the block” has a revolutionary idea. Several, in fact.

They are coming out with the Toksee Universal Communicator that can chat with all of the major chat clients (e.g. Yahoo Chat, Messenger, Skype, etc) from one central location.

It is *free* to use, and it allows you to put audio/video/text chat on a web page with just a few lines of javascript.

Think about it … you can put that code on any web page, and chat with whoever wants to chat with you, on any platform, all from one central location.

It can even do video “chat” with cell phones!

Now this may sound like something that is only for kids, but it is actually a dream come true for marketers.

The chat client is not their only product. They also have a social community that may well become bigger than any that exist now.

And they have a VOIP service that works even on dialup, because the compression is in the handset, not on the network.

And heavy duty marketers can upgrade to a marketing suite that allows you to upload a video and blast it out to all the major video publishing sites, among its many capabilities.

And get this … they share the revenue from the chat client and the social community and the revenue from the upgraded services with all of their users … even the free users.

Learn more about this universal communications revolution

You need to look at this to see the earnings and social network list building potential that is built into it from the get go.

Technorati Tags: social networking, Web 2.0, Toksee Universal Communicator, audio/video/text chat, social network list building

More than a few email marketers and opt-in email list builders are up in arms over the recent “Google Slaps”. For those who don’t know, Google suddenly started raising the Adwords bids on certain keywords for certain people back in July of 2006, and has changed the rules again a few times since then.

Folks who were trying to build an opt-in email list driving inexpensive PPC traffic to bare bones landing pages and to squeeze pages have been hit especially hard.

Basically what happened was that Google decided to crack down on people who were bidding on inexpensive keywords for the purpose of sending traffic to a squeeze page, or to a one-page sales letter. They were also after the “arbitrageurs”, who were making money by buying inexpensive Adwords traffic and sending clicks to pages that were crammed with higher paying Adsense ads, in the hopes of profiting for the difference between what they spent for the traffic and what they earned from it.

Most pertinent to us focused on list building was the effect it had on our ability to buy inexpensive Adwords key words and send the traffic to a squeeze page. More than a few folks suddenly found themselves out of the game.

So what do you do? Well, word has it that Google is now using a “Quality Score” to rank your landing page. Some of the factors thought to be relevant include whether or not there are links to a Privacy Policy and a page that provides Contact Information for the site owner. Also thought important are outgoing links to other pages on your site that provide relevant, free content. It’s also thought that you need to provide some free content right on the landing page, and/or a description of what the prospect will get if they fill out your form.

That’s my take on it, at least.

What have YOU been doing for email list building after the Google Slap?

John

Technorati Tags: Google Slap, build an opt-in email list, landing pages, squeeze pages, list building