Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Hustle 2009 – Final Cap.

Mar 2, 2009 Affiliate Marketing, Marketing

Well the Hustle 2009 challenge has been over for some while now and I didn’t quite make it to my goal.
It was a good run and I did learn a few things in regards to where I should place most of my focus.
There are a few programs that as you can see totally did not work out for me. Amazon Affiliate, Sedo, and even though I made a profit with Ebay’s Affiliate program I didn’t think it was a program I should spend a lot of time with.

Moving forward I plan to stick close to selling items on Ebay, selling my Push-N-Pop bottle openers on  Google Base and pushing products via Never Blue’s affiliate program.

Here are the final numbers from my Hustle Challenge

Goal $300.00, Final Numbers
Ebay Sales – $74.12
Ebay Affiliate Profit – $5.91
NeverBlue Affiliate – $12.35
Sedo Domain Sales – $0.00
Amazon Affiliate – $0.00
Push-N-Pop Bottle Opener – $10.00
____________________________
Total – $102.38

Digsby Totally Rocks

Jan 23, 2009 Marketing, Rants

So far I have used about every IM client known to man. These are some of the top few that I thought where pretty good.

Before you get into this review you have to understand that I work a desk job where Instant Messaging is a big part of my daily communication.

Digsby – Quick description Digsby is a multi-network IM client that is capable of connecting to all the big IM networks: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, GTalk and Jabber. It can also integrate with your email (I use Gmail), Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts. The install is simple and you can customize the interface to be 2.0 sexy. They also have a feature that will allow you to send SMS messages right from the IM window. But the main thing I love about Digsby which I thought was totally smart was the fact when you log into your account it sync all of your contacts. So for example if you’re like me and use IM at work, at home, and on your laptop you don’t want to have to add all of your contacts back into the system over and over again. Digsby handles all of that for you. The download is FREE.

Pidgin – Pidgin is pretty awesome also. I first heard of Pidgin when I was test driving Fedora. I think it could be jazzed up a bit though. I think they are still stuck in the 1.0 era. The only reason Digsby is kicking their but is because of the customization options. You can really pimp out the Digsby interface, but with Pidgin not so much. The download is FREE.

Trillian – For many years I was a big fan Trillian. I really don’t have much to complain about except for the lack of options. If it wasn’t for the massive amount of features that Digsby includes I would probably be still using Trillian. They have two versions of the software FREE and PAID.

GTalk - Light weight, great voice and video chat. But it’s the whole “Google owns your data” thing that spooks me out. The download is FREE.

Yahoo! Messenger – Simple old school, and doesn’t support other clients. Plus it seems like when you’re using Yahoo instant messenger, everyone you know is using AIM. And when you’re using AIM everyone you know is using GTalk. The download is FREE.

AIM – Same as above, everyone you know is not on AIM. It’s been awhile since I have used AIM, but if I recall I think their client included advertisement. The download is FREE.

You should try them all out for yourself.

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XML Sitemap Ping Application

Jan 21, 2009 Marketing, SEO

First of all let me apologize for not posting a status update on the Hustle 2009 challenge.
I was at work today and had this grand idea of creating a XML Sitemap application that could ping multiple search engines at once.
Well I just completed it, then found out that Ask.com was also supporting XML sitemaps so it’s not 100% complete. It’s currently hosted on another site of mine, but I will be bringing a copy over to the Blog Joe Blog site also.
XML Sitemap Ping
This application is not very technical; But I did get a chance to add some validation routines but nothing fancy.
So here you go have fun with it.
This code is not yet available for download
XML Sitemap Ping

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Hustle 2009 – Day 8, Yesterday’s Turmoil

Jan 15, 2009 Marketing

Well yesterday my first auction expired. I ended up having 5 people bid on the video game that I had for sale. That was actually pretty cool I walked away with a $10.00 profit. I can’t lie I was worried for a second, shoot things had been going pretty slow for me until then.
And if you remember I had created a Google Adwords campaign Monday to drive traffic to the affiliate site I was pushing, but I didn’t start to run the campaign until that Tuesday. The Google Adwords campaign I was managing was  doing pretty well I was extremely happy with this, in my opinion I actually had a sweet spot.  The affiliate pays out $23.00 per conversion and I have 750 keywords where 95% of the keywords I was bidding on I was only paying $.10 per click. My CTR rate wasn’t that great but that was something I could work on. I figured If I hadn’t made a conversion by the time my spend hit $10.00 then it would be time to switch it up and move onto the next affiliate program. So to better my CTR I decided to trim my keyword list and pull out the top bad performing keywords. Well to make a long story short while I was trimming and modifying my keyword list I decided to increase the CPC rate on one of my keywords from $0.10 to $0.30. Well I must of had zigged where I was suppose to have zagged and accidently change it to $30.00 instead of $0.30. Within 5 minutes I saw my spend of $5.00 shot up to $84.00. Yea $84.00, I was pissed but I had no one to be pissed at it was my entire fault. I now had $9.00 clicks. Needless to say I shut it all down and probably won’t run this ad until next month. Everything was going well until I screwed that up. Oh well you learn right.

On another note I added two more items to EBay; they suppose to expire this Saturday, so I’m crossing my fingers for success with these sales.

Nothing from Sedo, but I’m still have faith.

Until tomorrow

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Hustle 2009 – Day 7, Grey Cloud Today

Jan 14, 2009 Marketing

Today actually started off pretty good, but took a sharp turn into hell. I’m still a little pissed at myself for making a crazy mistake so I’m going to make this short.
I’ll explain what happened today, tomorrow.
… until tomorrow

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Hustle 2009 – Day 6, Putting Adwords Into the game

Jan 13, 2009 Marketing

Well its Monday, weekend is over and I feel like I’m sucking wind. I have a couple of irons in the fire but I’m not seeing any revenue come across the desk yet. Perhaps I have not given it enough time, I admit It has only been like 6 days. But dang show me the money.

I’m currently

  • Selling on Ebay
  • Participating in Ebay’s Affiliate Program
  • Have 3 Domains up for sale on Sedo
  • A affiliate site with Click Bank, and now starting tonight I have added a Google Adwords campaign to push traffic.

I mean really, I feel like I should be having some kind of action by now.

The Ebay auction I have running expires on the 13th, I’m crossing my fingers something transpires. But if not I’ll switch it out and take another stab at it.
As far as domain sales, I think I’m going to give it until the 15th before I upgrade my Sedo advertisement efforts. Maybe a front page display will do the trick.

Yea I’m getting a little discourage but I’m sticking with it

Until tomorrow

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Hustle 2009 – Day 3, Train Still on the Track

Jan 9, 2009 Marketing

Well I have to make this a quick post today, I’m going out of town tomorrow and need to hit the rack ASAP.
No Ebay Affiliate Program Sales today, thats cool the train is still on the track :-)

I did join a message board today, Digital Point. I think they have a well of great knowledge there. I have actually been coming to their site for some time now but just got around to joining today.

I also elected to upgrade my Sedo services to include category advertisement. This is basically like the premium home page advertisement but instead of displaying your domain names(s) that you have for sale on the home page they display them on the category page, 2nd tier page if you will. I happy, I think it’s a good start.

I did a lot of reading today about domain sales and what’s the safest route to take when selling them. I take it that there are a lot of scams going on so I want to be sure that I protect myself. I’m moving a bit fast so I need to read as much as I can.

Well guys and gals I must go It’s hell trying to take a 2 hours drive after 8 hours shift.

Until next time

… Tomorrows the Ebay Selling Day…YEA!

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Hustle 2009 – Day 2, Aggressive Domains Seller

Jan 8, 2009 Domains, Marketing

Tasks accomplished Today.
Well no sales where made today via the Ebay Affiliate program. I really wasn’t expecting to but if it did, it would have made my day.

I decided to be more aggressive in the selling of my domain names. Selling one would put me days ahead of my goal. So I located the contact information of a dot net owner and emailed the owner letting them know that I was in possession of the dot com and was currently thinking about putting the dot com up for sale. And asked whether they would be interested in purchasing  it before  I did so? I placed a time frame of 3 days on it so hopefully I will receive a response back soon.

I also decided to place another one of my domain names up for sale on Sedo. RealRapTones.com, it’s going to be interesting to see how that goes.

Sedo has a service where for a $40.00 fee they will display your domain name(s) that you have for sale on their homepage. Or course this is rotated amongst a list of others but I still think this is a good service, I’ll give it another day before I pull the trigger on that.

Well that’s all for today, not a bad day but it could have been better. I was not so motivated today. I think tomorrow I will begin to hit the message boards to see if I can spark some kind of interest with the domain sales.

Until tomorrow

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Hustle 2009 – Day 1, Domains for sale

Jan 7, 2009 Domains, Marketing

Tasks accomplished Today.
I listed only two of my domains for sale on Sedo. It’s hard parting with domains.

I joined Ebays affiliate program and created a script to display products on a couple of domains I own. In the past I have been sending traffic to Amazons Affiliate program, Amazon cookie duration expires after 24 hours which sucks, Ebays is much longer, this should be a successful move.

I found two items around the house that I’ll put up for sale on Ebay either Thursday or Friday. I figure things around the office would be more relaxed towards the weekend allowing me to get off from work at a reasonable time. I have never sold anything on Ebay before so I have no idea how much attention this will require.

These are the items I have chosen so far.

I think I mentioned in my previous post that I had a hard time parting with items.  I have no idea why, I just do. I have a portable DVD player that was given to me about a year ago that I have never opened but I keep it around because someday I will, that’s what I keep telling myself.

Not a bad day today,
Until Tomorrow

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Hustle 2009 – Strategy Day Today.

Jan 6, 2009 Marketing

Well there’s not much strategy to it, I have a limited amount of time to pull this off and as I mentioned before SEO efforts probably will not work.  I have decided my easiest route to producing some quick cash would be to

A.    Sale items on Ebay,
B.    Sale/Auction domains on Sedo.com,
C.    Join an affiliate program and find a product to sale.

So the tasks I have given myself  to take care of before I hit the bed tonight are

  • Setup a  Sedo account, create a list of domains that I wouldn’t mind parting with to be placed up for sale tomorrow.
  • Find a affiliate program that I could join with a quick approval process.
  • Make a list of items I have around the house to list on Ebay.

That’s about it…. until tomorrow

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