Update:  Looks like this was the foundation for GMail Autopilot.

Now that is more like it.

Is this Google's April Fools joke this year? Lame.

I like the old stuff better.

Last year, I wrote about the really funny time feature that Google added on April 1 in recognition of April Fool's day.  You may remember that one:

Big fun from Google on April Fools Day. Imagine my surprise when I went to read my mail just around midnight, only to find that Google had just released a new feature for GMail called GMail Custom Time.

With GMail Custom Time, you can date your email in the past. Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view and Bingo! -- any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Well, while waiting on the new April Fools joke from Google, I decided to take a look at a blast from the past (Plus, this year's joke looks lame.)

Introducing Google Romance.

After all -- Romance is just another search problem.

You'll begin your Google Romance romance by uploading your profile.

Note: those who generally favor the “throw enough stuff at the wall” approach to online dating might find it useful to employ our Batch Profile Uploading option.

• @rondavis007 thanks Ron. #
• @gushin bread was fantastic! #
• @rondavis007 TWIT? #
• Listening to NLP based podcast. Wondering if NLP really works, or is it just nonsense. #
• In the ER with youngest daughter and possible broken foot. Ouch! #
• Eating homemade jalapeno beer bread straight from the oven. Yum. #
• Finally celebrating Christmas with my parents. Better late than never. #
• My friend just started a new blog, and his first post is up. Check it out! InkHammer.com Stumbles appreciated. http://inkhammer.com/?p=10 #
• @jarret Check this out http://tinyurl.com/2tdkkj in reply to jarret #
• @colligan Right. But twitter is the tech. You are using the tech to some end. The nature of that tech is shaping the end result. in reply to colligan #
• @jasonvo @colligan But you cannot separate tech from the product. eg. Twitter. Before twitter, we would not have a 140 char debate. in reply to jasonvo #
• @aaronabber I am thinking that an IM product might generate more interest for your purpose. Like a copy of some cool course or software. in reply to aaronabber #
• @colligan I heard those 5000 people were all trying to fix Vista. Apparently, they gave up. Beyond repair. in reply to colligan #
• - Are You Having Trouble With AdSense? http://aweber.com/b/10B5Z #
• @PatrikBerggren It is going well but slowly. It is not my top priority right now. I have 30 sites up, creating content, and seeing some $. in reply to PatrikBerggren #
• Up early this morning preparing for a meeting. Need more coffee. #
• Just entered the $497 Blog Mastermind contest. You can win by following @JohnChow and retweet. http://xr.com/master He follows back too! #
• @jasonvo Are NDAs needed for mastermind groups? in reply to jasonvo #
• @jasonvo Should there be free alcohol at mastermind meetings, and if so, how much. Who should be responsible for bringing the blender? in reply to jasonvo #
• @jasonvo Mastermind group. Should there be a business profit model for a mastermind group, or should the group be "not for profit?" in reply to jasonvo #
• Wondering how to integrate my Google AdSense/AdWords/Gmail and Docs accounts under one login. Won't let me associate the accounts. Help? #
• Calling my grandmother. Sadly, she does not have twitter or facebook. #
• Taking kids to school. Rocking out to the Jonas Brothers CD. Not bad for pop music. Well produced. #
• @jasonpotash I don't go to bed. I write blog posts. LOL in reply to jasonpotash #
• Yep. Thanks. On my way. #
• IPod interfaced to car video. Watching @jasonvo how to register domain name tutorial on my car video. Too cool. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

A several posts ago, I reported on the release of Article Post Robot version 1.7. Since that time I have been using that new version of the software to post articles to article directories with relative ease. As I mentioned before, Article Post Robot can post to well over 400 article directories.

Spin That Content

Article Post Robot also has the ability to spin content.  Let's say you have the following sentence in your article:

Internet Marketing is a great way to earn a living.

Now, that is a great sentence (don't you think)?  The problem is, you may not want to publish that exact same sentence 400 times across the internet as part of your article.  You might want to mix it up a little instead.  No problem.  With Article Post Robot, you can "spin" the sentence like this:

Internet Marketing is a {{great|fantastic|stupendous|super}} way to {{earn|make}} a living.

When you put a word or phrase in double brackets within an Article Post Robot article, the software will randomly select one of the choices within the bracket each time it posts.  So, the above example will result in eight possible sentences, selected at random each time you post to a directory:

Internet Marketing is a great way to earn a living.

Internet Marketing is a fantastic way to earn a living.

Internet Marketing is a stupendous way to earn a living.

Internet Marketing is a super way to earn a living.

Internet Marketing is a great way to make a living.

Internet Marketing is a fantastic way to make a living.

Internet Marketing is a stupendous way to make a living.

Internet Marketing is a super way to make a living.

Do this enough times in your article, and you can actually post 400 unique articles instead of 400 duplicates.  While it is not clear just how important "duplicate content" is, common sense says that it is better to publish 400 well written unique articles than 400 copies of a single well written article.

Outsource The Configuration

One small bummer about Article Marketing is that you need to register with most article directories before you can post.  This can be a real drag if you do it yourself.   My recommendation:  Outsource.

Your time is valuable.  Instead of spending your weekend typing the same information into article directories over and over again, hire someone offshore to do it for you.  For tasks like this, I recommend a data entry specialist.  You can easily find one on ScriptLance -- but I recommend Mr. Jeevan.  You can reach him via email or GTalk at [dwarlords at gmail dot com].  He is a student with bills to pay and works very hard with competitive prices.  Jeevan can register you at all of the directories supported by Article Post Robot at a fair price (pennies per directory).

Special Deal For MasonWorld Readers

As I mentioned before, I have arranged for a special discont on Article Post Robot exclusively for my readers.  Check it out today.  Also, don't forget to check out my article directory rankings, updated weekly.

Regards,
Mark

On April Fool's Day, I was reminded about the power and magic of social networking. Of course, there has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about "Web 2.0." Now a media buzzword, "Web 2.0" is usually taken to mean anything that promotes social networking and collaboration. This can include social networking sites, wikis and, of course, blogs. Even in the brick and mortar business world, companies are starting to wake up to the marketing power of Web 2.0. The question that these companies are asking is "how can we use Web 2.0 to gain mind share and drive traffic?"

In the cyber world, using social networking sites like Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon to drive traffic is old news. However, yesterday I was reminded just how powerful this can be. About 11:30 PM, I got an IM from Garry Conn calling my attention to the new "time shifting feature" that Google had just added to GMail. He suggested that I do a quick blog post on it. I did that post, and the story up and stumbled only a few minutes before midnight (literally minutes after Google turned on their prank).

The Impact of April Fool's Day on My Stats

And then, the traffic started coming. Being a new blog, my traffic typically looks like this:

Now, I have been pretty happy with this. For the month of March, I was enjoying upwards of 30 uniques per day, with 2 pages per visit. Then the April Fools post was stumbled, dugg, sphunn, tweeted, etc, and this happened:

The y-axis on the plot has changed from 100 visits maximum to 6000 visits maximum. On April 1, in the 24 hours just after the post, I had 5302 new visitors (220 per hour). This represents a jump from 30 uniques per day in March to 5300 -- a 176-fold increase! This is really cool for a new blogger. Any time you can hit a button and get traffic like that, it makes you feel great (even if you get there with help and luck). Of course, it is not repeatable. This post (for example) probably will not enjoy 5300 views. LOL.

Where Did the Traffic Come From?

As I mentioned before, the post was stumbled, dugg (and shouted), sphunn, and tweeted. But where did all the traffic come from? It came from StumbleUpon (82%). Notably, almost %10 of the traffic was direct (people typing the main page into the browser -- suggests the the valuable of having a name that is easy to remember). Also notable is the 5% traffic from Google. Suggests that MasonWorld may not be in Google's sandbox since I was able to rank so quickly.

Is Social Media Traffic Valuable?

One of the things that you constantly hear about StumbleUpon (SU) is that the traffic that it generated is not valuable. Unfortunately, it is impossible for me to tell what specific clicks came from SU traffic, what came from Digg, etc. Also, while I can track all affiliate link clicks on my blog, but I cannot easily tell which clicks are on the 125x125 adds and which are on text links inside blog posts.

I run 4 adds on my blog sidebar. Prior to April 1, I was enjoying an average of 22 affiliate link or ad clicks per day. Based on an average number of page views for March of 78 page views per day, my normal click through rate (CTR) is 22/78 -- a monster CTR = 28%. By contrast, I had 176 clicks on April 1 against 6148 page views for a more reasonable (low) CTR of 2.86%. Note that the 28% CTR is not a strictly fair comparison since many of those clicks come from people who reached my blog searching for the affiliate product. So that is the point. People that come from SU are not generally looking to buy.

I did a similar analysis on my feed statistics. On March 1, I had about 20 subscribers. On March 30, I had 44 (I doubled my subscribers in March!). I had about 1100 unique visits in March. This means that the conversion rate from uniques to RSS subscriptions was about 2%. For every 100 unique visitors in March, 2% of them signed up for the RSS feed. On April 1, as you can see below, my subscriptions increased to 65. This means that 21 of the 5300 unique visitors on April 1 signed up (a conversion rate of 0.4 percent). Significantly lower than the baseline conversion rate, but I am thrilled to have them.

The Bottom Line

Well, I literally and figuratively stumbled into this traffic and this post. Welcome to the new RSS subscribers. I would be interested to hear comments from RSS subscribers that signed up yesterday about how they arrived at the site, and why they signed up. So, my conclusion is the SU and other Social Media Traffic is not "worthless" as some have suggested. It is wholesale traffic, and it is different than other kinds of traffic, but it is not worthless.

Thanks,
Mark

Big fun from Google on April Fools Day. Imagine my surprise when I went to read my mail just around midnight, only to find that Google had just released a new feature for GMail called GMail Custom Time.

With GMail Custom Time, you can date your email in the past. Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view and Bingo! -- any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

This new application feature could save my marriage. "But honey, I already took care of it -- they must not have gotten my email." Honey, I told you about that business trip to the Bahamas. Didn't you get my email?"

The best part is the social proof offered in the testimonial section:

"I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."

Todd J., Investment Banker

You just gotta love Google.

Very cool

Regards,

Mark

P.S. -- Thanks to Garry Conn for pointing this out to me.  He was busy working on his own April Fool's Prank at the time, so I wrote it up.

RSS feeds are cool, but to be honest with you, there are times when I get so busy it is hard for me to get to my reader. This, coupled with the fact that I am often mobile and don't have a great RSS reader for my BlackBerry means that I am never completely up to date with my RSS feeds. So, for blogs that I really care about, I subscribe by email. Email is great because I get it wherever I am -- in Outlook, on my BlackBerry, in GMail, etc. I "live in my email," so an email subscription is just the ticket for me for important things.

Now, one of the things that you always hear about email lists is that they are the most important cornerstone of an internet marketing business. Guys that are famous for information marketing will tell you that their lists are the real asset in their business. They document cases where businesses have fallen apart (due to partnership or other troubles), but were rebuilt later based on the strength of the surviving email list.

These ideas -- that email lists are part of the core of a legitimate and successful internet marketing effort and that they provide a convenience service to readers -- are why I started my own list. I have not done much with it yet, and I have no intent to monetize it any time soon. Still, I am convinced that lists are an important part of my long term strategy to provide value to my readers.

Now, you can imagine that as I am learning about internet marketing, I am paying attention to people that I have come to respect who are also successful. Note that there are many people who are sucessful that I do not respect. I have mentioned some of my favorites here before. When people I respect do things that make sense to me, I try to learn from them.

So, when Garry Conn decided to (finally) add an email list to his GCDC blog, I really paid close attention. I was one of the first people to sign up. Why? First, I am sure that the content in Garry's list will be great. Second, I expect Garry to be successful with his list, and I want to learn how to be successful with my own. Since Garry announced his list a few weeks back, I have been waiting patiently to see what he would do.

Yesterday, the wait was over. Garry published his first email to the list, entitled Blog Tips During Softball Practice. As a special treat for his blog readers, he made the first post public. The great thing was that it exceeded my expections. The bad thing is that I can already see that using Garry as a mentor for emails lists is going to be setting the bar really high for me. Maybe that's a good thing.

Anyway, I recommend that you check out Garry's post, and if you like it, I recommend that you Digg it.

Thanks,
Mark

Welcome to a page in the MasonWorld Internet Marketing Dictionary.

Want to add to one of the definitions below? Or perhaps something you were looking for was not here? Just leave a comment below. I hope you find this resource useful.

Regards,
Mark

Email Lists Can Be Reinvigorated

Email lists can always be reinvigorated. If you’re finding that the responsiveness of your list has dropped off lately, you may want to consider trying tactics to reinvigorate it. For instance, you might start by holding a weekly give-way to readers who enter a raffle to keep people interested.

Email List Building Through AdWords

Another approach to list building involves Google AdWords. First, create a strong squeeze page that is good at converting visitors. Next, use Google AdWords to send a deluge of traffic to your squeeze page.

Email List Building Through Forums

One excellent way in which you can build your list is to post on forums. In your signature, include a link to your squeeze page. Also, infrequently mention your list in forum posts.

Email Lists Make Sales

Any seasoned marketer will tell you that sales happen on the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth contacts—not on the first. This is why it is important to build an email list and market to it, rather than trying to sell directly always.

Email Marketing Can Be More Effective Than Direct Marketing

Email marketing allows you to follow up with customers and to pitch to them on a regular basis. For this reason, it can be much more effective than pitching to them only once using a sales page.

Email Marketing Strategies Are Vital

Starting an email marketing campaign without a strategy is a big mistake. Rather than simply sending out an ad, remember to carefully approach the situation with a pre-sales and sales process in mind.

Email Marketing Through Short Copy

Another way to approach email marketing is through short copy. This should consist of 300-500 words carefully-designed to promote a product or subscription. Remember to keep it personal, though, so that it does not seem unusual in an email.

Email Offers Must Be Approached Correctly

It’s easy to bungle email offers. My suggestion is the following: don’t get too salesy in the email. Instead, bait them with the email; and then direct them to some short copy on your site.

Email Proposals to Potential JV Partners

One of the hardest parts of JV partnerships is simply securing the partners. Rather than getting cold feet, find a list of contacts, draft a high-quality proposal, and then fire it off to each of them. Expect a lot of rejections; and be happy if you get a positive response.

Emailing Too Frequently Will Turn Off Customers

Even if you aren’t sending advertisements, emailing your existing customer base too frequently will annoy them. Avoid doing it.

Emailing Too Infrequently Might Make Customers Forget Who You Are

While you shouldn’t email your customers too frequently; you also shouldn’t email them infrequently. Not contacting them for months at a time will make them forget who you are. And when they do hear from you, they may mistake you for a spammer.

Enthusiasm is Important

One of the most important parts of overcoming challenges is maintaining a deep enthusiasm for your business. Always take the time to visualize what you’re doing; and to get excited about it.

Errors Are Part of the Learning Process

When it comes to business and marketing, errors are important. They rule out paths that won’t work for your business. Next time you encounter one, learn from it; and move on.

E-Course Creation

Creating an e-course is a great way to pull in customers and convert them over time. Usually, a course consists of 7-10 lessons on a specific subject; and, at various points in the course, refers the reader to products they can purchase.

E-Course Marketing

In order to market your e-course, you will want to take a several-pronged approach. First, create a squeeze page that allows visitors to add their names and email addresses. Next, drive traffic to the squeeze page using forums, Google AdWords, existing site traffic, banner ads, and any other sources you can find.

E-Course Tricks – Make the Course Free, but Suggest Paid Products

The key to having an effective e-course is interspersing paid products throughout it. That is—make the course free to attract as many people as possible, but then subtly sell them on a variety of different products that you own, as well as affiliate products.