If you haven’t heard of Facebook by now, you must be one of the few people on the planet who hasn’t. It’s one of the biggest social networking sites on the internet, and as such it offers a great way to get in touch with like minded people who have similar interests to you.
But while many social networking sites don’t particularly like blatant advertising on their pages, Facebook doesn’t fall into that group. There are ways and means to do most things online, and with Facebook the answer is in attracting the right kind of people to your profile page.
There is one other main feature that makes Facebook well worth looking at for making money though, and that will be revealed if you read the rest of this entry.
If you’re ready to get started making money on Facebook, click here to read about a 23 year old guy who has made thousands of dollars a month using nothing but a Free Facebook Account!
Once you have signed up to Facebook your first step should be to think about how you want to present yourself. I say that because you don’t have to be yourself in order to make money from Facebook. Don’t forget that you want to attract the attention of a specific group of people here, so that you become known as someone who is something of an expert on one particular subject. So choose wisely!
Go for a popular niche that you have an interest in yourself, and develop your persona in that area. If you already have something of a web presence in this area then you’ll find it will help you as more and more people become aware of who you are and what you know about.
Your first port of call, if you have anything second hand to sell which is related to your niche, is the Marketplace. It’s free to place ads in the Marketplace and there is no limit on how many you can place, so if for example you come across a bargain lot of books on your subject on eBay or at a yard sale you can list them all individually on Facebook and sell them on for a profit.
If you have a budget to spend on advertising and you have some external websites you want to promote, you can try out the Social Ads to see what benefits you get from them. It is well worth reading through the relevant help section to see what is involved though, as it is quite in depth.
The main benefit to being a member of Facebook is that you can build and use any number of applications to perform certain tasks on your profile page. Facebook doesn’t frown at users making money from their Facebook page, and indeed many people link in to other websites outside of Facebook itself. People are constantly building new applications and many of them are used by many different users to create pages that appeal to their own particular needs.
This is partly why you will succeed in making more money from Facebook if you brand yourself carefully before you get started on the site. Figure out what it is you want to do and what you want to achieve. If you already have a website up and running then you will be able to link into that, so keep the look and feel of your Facebook page in the same vein as your site.
But while you can link to other sites outside of Facebook, some people also sprinkle some affiliate links on their actual Facebook page itself. For example, some quick research revealed one person who links into a range of ClickBank products on their page and does well from doing so.
So long as you start from a strong position with a particular focus and brand in mind, you can do well by experimenting with all the benefits that Facebook offers. Take time to build up a network of friends and make sure you become known for being an expert in your particular sphere of interest.
If you’re ready to get started making money on Facebook, click here to read about a 23 year old guy who has made thousands of dollars a month using nothing but a Free Facebook Account!
Showing posts with label The Net. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Net. Show all posts
Sunday, January 16, 2011
SEO Isn’t Everything!
If you suck at SEO or don’t know how to optimize websites for search engines, it’s okay. There’s no need to feel left out. There are hundreds of people out there who don’t know a thing about SEO and most wont even know what it stands for.
I remember having a chat with this guy from UK and he asked me about getting traffic. I asked him, “Do you know about SEO?”, “Who? the Senior Executive Officer?” he replied. For such a guy, it’s hard to explain what SEO is and how it can benefit you and your business.
This is not only for those who do not know about SEO, in fact this is also for the people who do know about it. Let me just say: Would you be able to rank a domain you just bought for a keyword within 4-5 days.
If you’re a whitehat SEO believer I could expect a no. So where does you SEO go then? What if the keyword you’re targeting is time-sensitive. I mean, you just bought a domain yesterday (15th June) and you want to rank for keyword targeting America Day (July 4th), it is next to impossible to rank for keywords in 2 weeks.
So what I’m trying to tell is that keep you options open. Look for alternatives to SEO. I’m not talking about pay-per-click ads or traffic from social bookmarking websites.
Have you ever heard of the term indirect organic traffic? I’m sure you haven’t, because I just made that up.
But what it will reveal to you might just change the ways you get traffic.
Yesterday I was talking to this guy who just received his $600 cheque from ShareAsale which was what he earned in a total of 2 weeks. I got him to tell me his marketing strategies and I was surprised when he told me that he didn’t know a thing about SEO and never used any PPC program.
Basically, this guy did not spend a cent and he made money with even les knowledge than me. Of course, he had his website which isn’t even indexed by Google as of now (around 3 weeks old). Curious to know his strategy right?
He joined a forum related to his niche. He spent 1 week gaining authority in a forum. Posting, answering, asking and helping like crazy. So once you have authority you obviously have a great deal of newbies asking you questions. So all he did was refer people to his website and after 2 weeks he makes 23 sales and makes approximately $600. Not bad eh?
The story doesn’t end here. I’ve been doing this for 3 months now and have gotten traffic to website which have been sitting in the Google Sandbox for around 3 months now. I will write a post sometime this week illustrating how you can get the best out of no SEO and let it prove to be more effective.
I remember having a chat with this guy from UK and he asked me about getting traffic. I asked him, “Do you know about SEO?”, “Who? the Senior Executive Officer?” he replied. For such a guy, it’s hard to explain what SEO is and how it can benefit you and your business.
This is not only for those who do not know about SEO, in fact this is also for the people who do know about it. Let me just say: Would you be able to rank a domain you just bought for a keyword within 4-5 days.
If you’re a whitehat SEO believer I could expect a no. So where does you SEO go then? What if the keyword you’re targeting is time-sensitive. I mean, you just bought a domain yesterday (15th June) and you want to rank for keyword targeting America Day (July 4th), it is next to impossible to rank for keywords in 2 weeks.
So what I’m trying to tell is that keep you options open. Look for alternatives to SEO. I’m not talking about pay-per-click ads or traffic from social bookmarking websites.
Have you ever heard of the term indirect organic traffic? I’m sure you haven’t, because I just made that up.
But what it will reveal to you might just change the ways you get traffic.Yesterday I was talking to this guy who just received his $600 cheque from ShareAsale which was what he earned in a total of 2 weeks. I got him to tell me his marketing strategies and I was surprised when he told me that he didn’t know a thing about SEO and never used any PPC program.
Basically, this guy did not spend a cent and he made money with even les knowledge than me. Of course, he had his website which isn’t even indexed by Google as of now (around 3 weeks old). Curious to know his strategy right?
He joined a forum related to his niche. He spent 1 week gaining authority in a forum. Posting, answering, asking and helping like crazy. So once you have authority you obviously have a great deal of newbies asking you questions. So all he did was refer people to his website and after 2 weeks he makes 23 sales and makes approximately $600. Not bad eh?
The story doesn’t end here. I’ve been doing this for 3 months now and have gotten traffic to website which have been sitting in the Google Sandbox for around 3 months now. I will write a post sometime this week illustrating how you can get the best out of no SEO and let it prove to be more effective.
Google Caffeine Update Coming Up, Watch Out
Hey there fellow bloggers, money-makers or just internet users,
I’m definite you’re among the mass internet population that uses Google. If you don’t know yet, then please get to know that I love Google a lot.[sarcasm] After all it has done for me through it services, it has given me a head start in my online ventures[/sarcasm].
Jokes apart, I really think that Google is a great service and sends a lot of traffic to my website which makes it even better.
So, this news has been surrounding the SEO community for a while and I just got to know about it a week ago.
Google’s officials have told that Google will be updating their search engine algorithms in the new update called ‘Caffeine’. In fact, this has been around since August and Google was kind enough to give a test of the caffeine run data center for us to check the difference on.
Well, they’ve taken it down now (sorry guys) but there would definitely be a few things for us to keep up on for good search results in 2010. I would highly recommend you to check out Matt Cutt’s blog post on this which includes a video explanation about it too. Or, you can view the video below:
For the record, this is going to be the biggest Google update after the post 2005 or early 2006 ‘big daddy’ update. While we can just expect for the search engine result pages to maintain the listings of our websites, such a thing might not be the case because Google had a total re-architecture built and lot of things changed.
Matt Cutts says that they tried their best to keep the Google index as it is. He also says that the results wouldn’t change so much and the average google searcher would not even notice the changes.
The power user, however, will notice some changes which is Google’s self-proclaimed ‘increase in search quality’. If you’re interested in knowing a few guesses which I think might be playing a big part in the coming up Caffeine update, then you can read on.
When a website gets 500+ diggs it is obvious that this website is trustable and has good content. So I noticed a few results up on the demo Caffeine engine that seemed to be driven by social media backing.
Well, these are my guesses for the changes that might take place. I’m pretty sure that the changes will prove useful for the ‘white-hat’ seo-ers out there and I would definitely like to hear some stuff from the black hatters as well.
I’m definite you’re among the mass internet population that uses Google. If you don’t know yet, then please get to know that I love Google a lot.[sarcasm] After all it has done for me through it services, it has given me a head start in my online ventures[/sarcasm].
Jokes apart, I really think that Google is a great service and sends a lot of traffic to my website which makes it even better.
So, this news has been surrounding the SEO community for a while and I just got to know about it a week ago.Google’s officials have told that Google will be updating their search engine algorithms in the new update called ‘Caffeine’. In fact, this has been around since August and Google was kind enough to give a test of the caffeine run data center for us to check the difference on.
Well, they’ve taken it down now (sorry guys) but there would definitely be a few things for us to keep up on for good search results in 2010. I would highly recommend you to check out Matt Cutt’s blog post on this which includes a video explanation about it too. Or, you can view the video below:
For the record, this is going to be the biggest Google update after the post 2005 or early 2006 ‘big daddy’ update. While we can just expect for the search engine result pages to maintain the listings of our websites, such a thing might not be the case because Google had a total re-architecture built and lot of things changed.
Matt Cutts says that they tried their best to keep the Google index as it is. He also says that the results wouldn’t change so much and the average google searcher would not even notice the changes.
The power user, however, will notice some changes which is Google’s self-proclaimed ‘increase in search quality’. If you’re interested in knowing a few guesses which I think might be playing a big part in the coming up Caffeine update, then you can read on.
Internal links will have a little less effect
Unlike previously, according to some tests I put on the Caffeine sandbox, I noticed that pages that were highly dependant on internal links (links to a page from within the site) had a little negative change in their rankings.Social media will play the BIGGEST part
It is still my guess, but I think that soon the ‘linking game’ in google’s algorithms will decrease in weightage over time. We all know that it is quite tough to game websites like digg, stumbleupon, etc. and this can be used by Google to it’s advantage.When a website gets 500+ diggs it is obvious that this website is trustable and has good content. So I noticed a few results up on the demo Caffeine engine that seemed to be driven by social media backing.
Well, these are my guesses for the changes that might take place. I’m pretty sure that the changes will prove useful for the ‘white-hat’ seo-ers out there and I would definitely like to hear some stuff from the black hatters as well.
I’m Clueless About The Caffeine Update
Hello wonderful people,
I’m certain you read my post about the Google caffeine update or would have already read about it elsewhere. While it wasn’t in the Google search operating before the holidays but now it is.
I’m sure I would be among the last ones writing about the effects of this update but I think I should be letting everybody know a little about the effects of this update on my websites. So you know that it’s not fluff.
I track my website’s rankings on the tool rank checker by seobook, which is one of the must-have SEO tools that I mentioned a few months back. Since I’m updating to have a look at my rankings everyday and rank checker is kind enough to record updates every time I check the new ranking so that I can compare my rankings over time.
Please bare with me as I do not really know how to get graphical representation from excel data, so instead I’ll just point out some sudden changes that I noticed on my rankings.
I did not get time to read other people’s experiences but for my website, I saw a sudden bump on the 3rd of January 2010. More than half of my rankings had changed and this is not some sort of a Google dance.
I know this because I did not have any such thing done to my website since the last few months. Luckily, for me the bump was positive.
Keywords with other websites improves as well so it is very hard for me to decide what has changed, although I have used different marketing strategies for almost all of my websites.
A little thing that I think has affected my website might be a little LSI. I don’t know what you call it but I find my website getting traffic from keywords that were not even mentioned on the page even once.
Those keywords were never even used in my linking and still my website was ranking fairly well for them. By this, I mean ranking above other websites which had this keyword optimized on their pages and also in their links. I find this pretty odd.
Maybe Google has started categorizing keywords and has made has made hubs of synonyms and knows that some content is related if it is trusted for the main keywords it has.
I’ll be looking further into this because I’m sure there is something bigger cooking up. Lastly, I’m stunned by the Google developers. Matt cutts was right. The whole Google algorithm change was so ‘under the hood’ that hardly any SEO out there can pin-point factors that have changed in their ranking methods.
So what changes have you experienced on your websites? Have you also seen an increase in the amount of visitors you get from Google? Or the vice-versa? What are your guesses might have changed in their algorithm. I would love to know.
I’m certain you read my post about the Google caffeine update or would have already read about it elsewhere. While it wasn’t in the Google search operating before the holidays but now it is.
I’m sure I would be among the last ones writing about the effects of this update but I think I should be letting everybody know a little about the effects of this update on my websites. So you know that it’s not fluff.
I track my website’s rankings on the tool rank checker by seobook, which is one of the must-have SEO tools that I mentioned a few months back. Since I’m updating to have a look at my rankings everyday and rank checker is kind enough to record updates every time I check the new ranking so that I can compare my rankings over time.
Please bare with me as I do not really know how to get graphical representation from excel data, so instead I’ll just point out some sudden changes that I noticed on my rankings.
I did not get time to read other people’s experiences but for my website, I saw a sudden bump on the 3rd of January 2010. More than half of my rankings had changed and this is not some sort of a Google dance.
I know this because I did not have any such thing done to my website since the last few months. Luckily, for me the bump was positive.
The Caffeinated Results
So basically, I have around 10 keywords on my rank checker list. Out of them I see an improvement in 5 of the keywords. With most of them moving from the second page to the top five of the first page.Keywords with other websites improves as well so it is very hard for me to decide what has changed, although I have used different marketing strategies for almost all of my websites.
A little thing that I think has affected my website might be a little LSI. I don’t know what you call it but I find my website getting traffic from keywords that were not even mentioned on the page even once.
Those keywords were never even used in my linking and still my website was ranking fairly well for them. By this, I mean ranking above other websites which had this keyword optimized on their pages and also in their links. I find this pretty odd.
Maybe Google has started categorizing keywords and has made has made hubs of synonyms and knows that some content is related if it is trusted for the main keywords it has.
I’ll be looking further into this because I’m sure there is something bigger cooking up. Lastly, I’m stunned by the Google developers. Matt cutts was right. The whole Google algorithm change was so ‘under the hood’ that hardly any SEO out there can pin-point factors that have changed in their ranking methods.
So what changes have you experienced on your websites? Have you also seen an increase in the amount of visitors you get from Google? Or the vice-versa? What are your guesses might have changed in their algorithm. I would love to know.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Was the facebook boycott any good?
I’m back people and as I mentioned before, I would post on whether the facebook boycott went successful or at least according to what was planned. The main aim behind the boycott was the removal of those offensive pages, which went successful.
Other than that, the boycott was to come from a whole community rather than separated individuals. I’m not sure whether facebook was banned in other muslim countries or not but a big chunk of the muslim community took the initiative of not using facebook that day.
The biggest part of those who boycotted were pakistani muslims. The problem is that there isn’t really a way to check what happened to facebook in those 10 days (from 20th May to 30th May). Any inferences made from analytics programs like Alexa would be inaccurate.
However, considering that alexa is yet the only better check which can give us something on the least. As compared to compete or other open analytics programs. So, considering whatever proportion of muslims that use Alexa, below is the analysis.
Alexa has a small user base as compared to the general internet population which would make the results extremely biased to the activities of that little ‘population’ of alexa toolbar users. When measuring things on a large scale, we do take random samples however this isn’t random either.
Most alexa users are avid internet users, people who are web 2.0 enthusiasts or webmasters and bloggers. If assumed that this is true, then we can directly deduce that there are much (much) more webmasters and technology enthusiasts in the world west (or east) of developing countries like Pakistan and other muslim countries.
Below is the demographic taken directly from alexa showing the distribution of it’s users over countries:
Hence, considering the data provided by alexa we cannot make a very justifiable conclusion. However, just for the sake of curiosity, we’ll put the data to use. So here it is:
** = Source: Alexa’s page about facebook
eCPM = Cost per a thousand impressions
So, according to the assumptions made and the available data, my approximate of the loss is near 0.24 million dollars for 10 days. Now, we’ll see whether this actually had a difference making impact on facebook overall.
Facebook’s revenue in 2008 was around $300 million, the most recent official data we have available would be of 2009. Facebook made around $550 million in 2009. So, we’ll take this figure into further calculation of the data. In this case:
I’m uncertain as to how many other countries implemented a boycott on facebook nation-wide and how many muslims voluntarily joined the boycott. I’m sure, the overall figure would be more than the double of this because at least a million other muslims world-wide joined in the boycott and the eCPM in the western countries is much higher thus contributing to a bigger loss.
The following are the main variables which can alter the data if the assumptions made are invalid:
All is good now, facebook has been open in pakistan for almost 2 weeks now and I’ve been using it ever since it opened. I just hope that facebook continues to co-operate with all portions of it’s user population and respects the interests of all.
I would love to hear to hear your comments on this, and please bear in mind that these figures are an approximate as well as an estimate. Any constructive criticism is most welcome and please consider to share this with your friends.
Other than that, the boycott was to come from a whole community rather than separated individuals. I’m not sure whether facebook was banned in other muslim countries or not but a big chunk of the muslim community took the initiative of not using facebook that day.
The biggest part of those who boycotted were pakistani muslims. The problem is that there isn’t really a way to check what happened to facebook in those 10 days (from 20th May to 30th May). Any inferences made from analytics programs like Alexa would be inaccurate.
However, considering that alexa is yet the only better check which can give us something on the least. As compared to compete or other open analytics programs. So, considering whatever proportion of muslims that use Alexa, below is the analysis.
Alexa has a small user base as compared to the general internet population which would make the results extremely biased to the activities of that little ‘population’ of alexa toolbar users. When measuring things on a large scale, we do take random samples however this isn’t random either.
Most alexa users are avid internet users, people who are web 2.0 enthusiasts or webmasters and bloggers. If assumed that this is true, then we can directly deduce that there are much (much) more webmasters and technology enthusiasts in the world west (or east) of developing countries like Pakistan and other muslim countries.
Below is the demographic taken directly from alexa showing the distribution of it’s users over countries:
Hence, considering the data provided by alexa we cannot make a very justifiable conclusion. However, just for the sake of curiosity, we’ll put the data to use. So here it is:
- 0.9% of facebook’s users are pakistanis
- Facebook has over 400 million users *
- Therefore, there are 3.6 million pakistani facebook users (taking the minimum of total facebook users)
- 50% of facebook users login everyday (1.8 million users in pakistan’s case) *
- 1.8 million logins a day multiplied by 10 days, 18 million logins (the boycott lasted 10 days)
- Average pageviews per person on facebook are 13.46 (13.46 x 18 million = 242.28 million) **
- Assumed eCPM $1 (no data available on this)
- Therefore, $1 x 242,280,000 x 0.001 = $242,280
** = Source: Alexa’s page about facebook
eCPM = Cost per a thousand impressions
So, according to the assumptions made and the available data, my approximate of the loss is near 0.24 million dollars for 10 days. Now, we’ll see whether this actually had a difference making impact on facebook overall.
Facebook’s revenue in 2008 was around $300 million, the most recent official data we have available would be of 2009. Facebook made around $550 million in 2009. So, we’ll take this figure into further calculation of the data. In this case:
- $550,000,000 in 365 days
- Average revenue of 10 days = (550000000 x 10 /365 = $15,068,493)
- Pakistan’s share of the revenue (242280 / 15068493 x 100 = 1.6%)
I’m uncertain as to how many other countries implemented a boycott on facebook nation-wide and how many muslims voluntarily joined the boycott. I’m sure, the overall figure would be more than the double of this because at least a million other muslims world-wide joined in the boycott and the eCPM in the western countries is much higher thus contributing to a bigger loss.
The following are the main variables which can alter the data if the assumptions made are invalid:
- eCPM: I assumed that the only revenue facebook has is that it get’s paid per a thousand impressions from it’s advertisers. They are also be operating a pay-per-click system, but we cannot be sure of the data for that, which is why I used the eCPM. Plus, I’ve assumed an eCPM of $1 which seems quite relevant to Pakistan’s case.
- Number of users: I’m 100% sure that the number of users does not include the facebook mobile users (which represnts 25% of facebook’s users). This would of course add to the total amount calculated, however, no data is available on that.
All is good now, facebook has been open in pakistan for almost 2 weeks now and I’ve been using it ever since it opened. I just hope that facebook continues to co-operate with all portions of it’s user population and respects the interests of all.
I would love to hear to hear your comments on this, and please bear in mind that these figures are an approximate as well as an estimate. Any constructive criticism is most welcome and please consider to share this with your friends.
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