The Death of BlogRush?

by Top Affiliate on November 6, 2007

BlogRush

Only a few months ago we were all promoting this widget like crazy to our fellow bloggers hoping to get tons of referral bloggers before our competition gobbled them up.  Today, the pulse of BlogRush is faint at best these on the NET.  With exceptionally low CTR’s of the social marketing widget reported by high traffic blogs such as problogger.com, doshdosh.com, etc. and general negative feedback from the marketing community this may be the death of BlogRush as we know it.

You’ll notice I’ve also removed the BlogRush widget from my page.  During the 1.5 months I had it posted, it produced less than a .01 CTR.  You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that blows. 

I placed the widget about halfway down my blog just below the fold…probably like 99% of the rest of BlogRusher’s because revenue ads will always trump widgets.  In this location your CTR will be pretty darn low already and your blog posts, when shown on other relevant blogs, will be competing with five (5) other blog posts thereby reducing your CTR by another 20%. 

Sorry, but if you’ve placed the widget at the top of your blog you’re really just bleeding traffic and revenue.

We’d all like a fancy shmancy widget to magically bring us loads of laser targeted, high quality traffic but in “the real world” widgets are more form/fun then function.  BlogRush, SmartLinks and even MyBlogLog widgets are nothing more than ads that do not benefit the blogger.

[tags]Blogrush, SmartLinks, MyBlogLog, widgets, social marketing, traffic, bloggers[/tags]

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Google OpenSocial Is Open For Mass Business

by Top Affiliate on November 2, 2007

Google just announced that starting tonight, developers can start writing applications using the social API for Orkut, MySpace, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING at http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial

OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites.  With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.

OpenSocial

This is slick…So what’s the hold up Facebook?  I bet you buckle like a belt soon under the pressure.  =)

[tags] Orkut, MySpace, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, XING, OpenSocial, Facebook, Google, social API, social applications[/tags]

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Cost Effective Affiliate Marketing

by Top Affiliate on September 26, 2007

A buy.at sponsored E-consultancy report indicates affiliate marketing is the most cost effective channel for driving customer acquisition.  The report identified:

  • 95% of brands say affiliate marketing is ‘very cost-effective’ or ‘quite cost effective’
  • An average of 18 per cent of the online marketing budget is spent in the channel
  • Travel companies using affiliate marketing most effectively

The affiliate marketing report is jam packed with some very helpful marketing numbers and figures.  Take a quick minute and check out  the E-consultancy snippet for more information at:

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/364296/affiliate-marketing-delivers-the-most-cost–effective-customer-acquisition.html

The full results of the research will be released at ad:tech where buy.at will have copies of the sample report at stand number 471.

The research report is also available to E-consultancy subscribers, or on a pay-per-view basis, at:

http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/affiliate-marketing-merchants-report-2007/

[tags]affiliate marketing, ad:tech, e-consultancy, affiliate marketing, online marketing, customer acquisition, cost effective[/tags]

Stephen Ralph
http://www.Top-Affiliate.com
http://www.FreeAdvertisingBlog.com

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