So admit it you’ve either heard about or have been Rick Rolled. If not, where have you been, Antarctica?

For those who have managed to avoid the Internet over the past 3 months, One video has been causing quite a storm, unusually a music video of

Rick Astley performing “Never Gonna Give You Up” from 1987 the year I was born incidentally.

What happened was a prank, people who clicked on links expecting one thing were suddenly confronted with Rick Astley, and often the message “You’ve been Rick Rolled”. This is a common ‘bait and switch’ tactic where a visitor is sucked in expecting some valuable content, but is instead fed a completely unrelated video.

You have to see the funny side, so heres a funny variant where Beaker of the Muppets is dubbed singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”.-

Good fun, if you want to see the original no-dubbed Beaker in action you can find it here. (And No I have not Rick Rolled that link!)

Well whats the point talking about this, well the main video has been shown 11,237,444 on youtube at the time I’m writing this. Plus the spin offs that have seen at least 30 million.

Accidentally it has become the biggest marketing of a video this year. Imagine if you could replicate that with a video promoting a product of your own, like a website the potential is amazing. Image just replicating that by 0.01%. That would be over 1000 potential viewers you have the opportunity to convert.

But the difficulty is in converting, a logo or web address maybe off putting and prevent the spread, therefore more subtle techniques must be employed. Such as a brief display of the logo or placement of the product in the video or most commonly used is to leave a link in the description of the video. It was this curiosity that fueled the “Rick Rolled” craze. Just cashing in on this human nature is the challenge.

Remember ‘curiosity killed the cat’,

Cheers,

Martyn

p.s One last laugh-

Comic from xkcd.com

Post from: Money Making Student

The Secret Power of Viral Videos, You’ve been Rick Rolled

Related posts:

1. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, It’s all in the Mix
2. Clever Marketing from Cadbury’s
3. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Place!

Following on from my first post in this series on the marketing mix, I would like to introduce the first ‘P’ of the 4 P’s.

Product

Traditionally this refers to a product or service provided by a business.

Relating this to a blog or website is quite easy. Your blog (website) provides a service in that it educates, informs or entertains visitors. If it does not do this for your visitors from your target market, it may fail to achieve any notable growth or maintain existing readers.

Remember content is key, therefore has to be created with your target audience in mind. Failure to do so, is likely to not generate repeat visits. This being crucial inorder to obtain a loyal (and growing number of) visitors.

Trying not to go off topic to is often the best bet, your readers are probably only interested in your main topics, so writing off topic can put people off. A little variety to spice things up, can’t be condemmed, just do it sparingly.

Another point worth considering is to make your blog differentiated from the many ‘me-to’ blogs in your niche. Building a brand or unique identity differentiates you, therefore making your blog more memorable to visitors. Allowing you to stand out in a crowd.

This can be achieved in several ways or by a combination. Some of the most important include using a unique design to your blog, e.g customise your theme, by changing colors or the header, or for the more advanced/adventurous try building your own theme/site from scratch. Also you could try writing in an interesting writing style, although just being yourself can lead to a writing style that is unique. They are just a couple of ideas for now.

Ultimately remember your content must fulfill the wants and needs of your visitors; research, find out what they are, investigate how competing blogs target your niche. Find weaknesses and try and fill the gap.

Finally remember, Product is only one of the 4 P’s, the other 3 (Price, Promotion, Place) will follow later in this series. Product is an essential ingredient but it must also be blended with the 3 other P’s in order to gain the maximum effect.

Best of luck,

Martyn.

Post from: Money Making Student

The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Product!

Related posts:

1. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Price!
2. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Place!
3. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Promotion!

Exchanging links, can and is one of the best ways to get a new blog (or website) off the ground.

Potential visitors are highly unlikely to accidentally stumble on to your site unless they are led there from a link. But gaining those initial links can be difficult, top bloggers are not going to link to you, unless you have stunning content. So gaining traffic sources to a new blog will need a proactive attitude.

But who to exchange with and why? Well the general rule is, for bloggers targeting a certain niche, will need to get bloggers from within their niche to link to them. This is mainly because Uncle Google wants you to do this as links from similar sites help Googles crawlers as well as tells Google that your site is important to that niche. In other words it’s like a recommendation to them. Whereas links from sites that are not similar or beneficial to visitors gets marked down by Google.

You may now be wondering why I’m writing this, well I’m looking to exchange links with other bloggers who think that they have content that may be interesting/beneficial to my readers. I’m still new around the blogosphere so exchanging links seems a natural way to make those so important initial connections.

So if your interested I’m going to be actively seeking 5 link exchanges with blogs that are either ’student’ or ‘make money’ related over the coming two weeks.

If your interested, drop me an email with a link to your blog, see the contact page to find out how.

I can’t guarantee I will take up everyone who asks, but I look forward to any offers.

Cheers,

Martyn

Post from: Money Making Student

Connect with the World

Related posts:

1. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, It’s all in the Mix
2. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Place!
3. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Product!

Some will have seen this, it is basically another directory system based around your RSS feed. As with other directories there are the usual categories to put your blog into. But one differentiating point is a top 100 list that resets every month. Gaining access to this ‘elite’ list is by referring more visitors to your rssHugger blog page, the more visits the higher you go up the list. I personally don’t see the point of this, I’m just looking to find more traffic sources.

So you wonder why I’m writing this? Well to get a free listing you have to write a post about rssHugger, otherwise it will cost. Hence why I’m writing this, to get a ‘free’ listing and another potential traffic source. Worth it? well it only took 10 mins so I can’t complain.

Martyn.

Post from: Money Making Student

rssHugger

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1. Connect with the World
2. The BlogRush Effect
3. Matched.co.uk May Provided the Answer to Many Low Traffic Blogs

The Marketing Mix that is, You may or may not of heard about the 4 P’s. They are essentially the 4 most important points to consider before launching a product, except I’m going for a slight twist, the product is a blog, your blog (or website).

So time for some clever marketing,

the 4 p’s are:-

• Product
• Price
• Promotion
• Place

So how do they apply,

Product

Your product blog or website must serve a need or want of customers/readers. There is no point creating a blog aimed at no-one. Research your target audience, the likely popularity of your subject/niche and decide what they need or want. There is no point on a ‘make money online’ blog to go and discuss keeping hamsters as a pet, because your readers are not expecting this sort of content. But on the other hand if you have a personal blog you may be able to discuss a wider range of topics, as your readers are not expecting content concentrating on a single subject. In many ways the person behind the blog is the product, in the same way celebrities are in ‘real’ life, the interest is in the actions of the person/blogger.

Price

Unlike normal products, you don’t set a real price on accessing your blog (unless you sell a product). Therefore this part of the marketing mix is open to interpretation to some extent. But for every action for a reader costs, e.g reading your article is costing them time so ultimately they want/need to gain something useful, if they don’t gain from your blog, they may not return. Hence writing valuable content target at your market, therefore your readers, is essential for success. As the average time spent, plus the number of return visits rise, so does the value of your blog.

For those who choose to display advertising, charging too much is not going to encourage repeat business or positive referrals, but charging too little can lead to poor returns. Trying to get a good balance is essential. You may have seen I have added Adtoll and Project Wonderful ads to this site, they are great as the cost of advertising is set by demand and number of readers therefore leading to a fair value for advertising for both parties.

Promotion

If no-one knows about a product it wont sell, If no-one knows about your blog it wont get read.

Promote it, tell the world about your wonderful blog and how it can help them or why they need to read it.

This can be accomplished by many ways, such as web directories, search engine listings, forums, commenting on other blogs, social marketing, exchanging links, widgets (entrecard, blogrush) and word of mouth (tell friends and family) e.t.c.

Placement

Again open to interpretation, for a normal product it describes how many outlets you have got for your product. For a blog this could be seen as how many incoming links you have got, as mentioned within promotion. Network with other bloggers and try to exchange suitable links with your blog. If your link compliments their content, the visitors you get are more likely to be interested in your product, your blog. Therefore could become potential readers/subscribers. A link from a random site will not give you ‘customers’ for your target audience. Targeted traffic is essential.

Overall I hope this has given a useful introduction to the marketing mix and applying it to your blog. Applying all 4 P’s will give you synergy or to rest of us 1+1+1+1 = 5. I will discuss further the 4 P’s individually in future posts, so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Martyn.

Post from: Money Making Student

The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, It’s all in the Mix

Related posts:

1. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Place!
2. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Promotion!
3. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Price!

Some may have noticed a little change. ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, but if it is, hoping things will get better won’t solve the problem. So I have decided to remove BlogRush, the concept was good, but as I explained previously, the results were poor and have continued to be poor. But rather than remove a valuable connection to other similar blogs, I have decided to replace it with another blog network.

Entrecard

The basics, well think of it like a virtual business card. As in real life you can hand your business cards around to other businesses/blog owners who have the Entrecard widget. For this you earn credits, 1 for you and 1 to the person you give your card to. This is done by clicking on ‘Drop yours’ at the bottom of the widget. Feel free to do it on mine, but first you must create your Entrecard. You don’t need to be creative as there is a ‘card creator’ using some simple templates. The usual option of uploading your own is available to you also.

But also you can use your business card as an advert, you can place it on different blogs, this costs you credits. The amount depends on the popularity of that blog. Sadly it is not all that simple because thankfully the blog owner gets to review your card, before it gets displayed. Therefore cutting out spam and we should be pleased with that!

The reverse is also true, other bloggers can advertise on your site earning credits for you to spend!

Whether it will gain me valuable traffic, I will wait and see. Unlike BlogRush it is going to be more labour intensive, but that may be key to its success as it will be more of a ‘network’ of bloggers interacting.

Fingers crossed for Entrecard!

Martyn.

Post from: Money Making Student

BlogRush Gets the Boot, Hello Entrecard!

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1. The BlogRush Effect
2. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, It’s all in the Mix
3. Connect with the World

Firstly, before I discuss BlogRush, apologies for the lack of posts in the last week, university work takes priority at moment. This has been holding me back a little of late, but not to worry my desk is slowly becoming more visible, after hiding under pages of half finished practical write ups!

Well then BlogRush has been causing a bit of a stir over the last few months! For those of you who haven’t heard of BlogRush here’s what it is and how it works:-

It’s aim according to the website,

“BlogRush is a free service that was created to help bloggers solve their #1 need:
More Readers For Their Blog.”

This is done by hosting a widget, as seen in the top right of this page, on your blog (a simple piece of code). This widget then shows the latest blog post titles, that may be of interest to your readers. For showing the widget you get credit for each time the widget is displayed in front of one of your readers. This then leads to your blog post titles being shown on other blogs in your niche, equal to as many credits you have ‘earned’. Also low traffic blogs get bonus credits to try and help them along!

But does it work, lets take one of my recent posts as an example. “Easy Money, No Hassle, How?” this post has been shown, according to BlogRush, 3875 times from which I got 2 readers. This may sound pretty poor, but looking at my server stats, these visitors were unique, spent longer and looked at more pages than the average visitor. The downside is other posts have been shown on a couple of thousand blogs, but I have gained no readers from them.

So ultimately is it good or bad? Well to gain anything you have to write post titles that grab peoples attention or make them curious. Otherwise it is likely to fail, I suggest you read Brian Clark’s post over at copyblogger -

“10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work”

But the traffic you will gain will be high quality, but, small quantity. If you are trying to make money this may not be what you are after. If on the other hand your blog is just for personal enjoyment on a niche subject I don’t see why you shouldn’t try it. For me, it will stay another month or two. I don’t believe in quitting early, because you just don’t know what is around the next corner. But if it’s performance doesn’t improve I might have to review BlogRush’s placement on this blog.

A little patience is needed, me thinks!

Martyn.

image: www.freeimages.co.uk

Post from: Money Making Student

The BlogRush Effect

Related posts:

1. BlogRush Gets the Boot, Hello Entrecard!
2. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, It’s all in the Mix
3. The 4 P’s of Marketing and your Blog, Price!