Online Bull

Today, the web is crowded. There are hundred and hundreds of blogs and other kinds sites in virtually every niche. There are many bloggers out there who want to be A-listers in their own niche. The bad thing is that there are simply way too many bloggers who want to be on the top. This results in stiff competition. So, it is pretty much impossible for you to get to the top in a short span of time. There are a few A-listers in every niche, but the reason they are at the top is because they most of them started blogging years ago. Most of the A-listers like Darren Rowse, John Chow, Yaro Starak and others started blogging in long ago, some started as early as 2000. Back then, there was very little competition.

But today, the internet is so big that you’ve got to do something remarkable in order to gain even a bit of attention from others. Let me explain it in the case of blogging. Every internet marketer or webmaster knows that stats are very important. Stats include daily traffic, reach, number of subscribers and other metrics.

It is possible to make a little money online quickly with little effort. But making a lot of money online is not so easy. If you want to make an impact in your niche, then you need to do one very essential thing - generate buzz. Buzz doesn’t mean traffic alone. Generating buzz means generating interest or talk or even gossip relating to your blog or your startup. The concept is pretty simple. You generate buzz, buzz generates traffic, traffic brings in new visitors and readers, and readers can become your subscribers.

You can generate buzz by doing something different from others or even doing something stupid. Generating buzz will give your blog some recognition from others. It will put your blog in the spotlight. Only this will enable it to grow and become big.

In the next post, I’ll talk about how to generate buzz and something related to young bloggers and entrepreneurs.

Want to get more updates on internet marketing tips? Subscribe to my blog through RSS or through email.You can also follow me on twitter. My twitter username is @ganeshsrinivas.

Right now, Twitter is probably the hottest thing on the web. Twitter has been gaining ground over the last few months. Twitter now has millions of users. People are spending more time on twitter than any other site (even me). Nowadays, whenever I need to know some news or details about anything, I usually go to Twitter first and use their search feature. And a lot of times, I have found the answers to my questions. More people are turning to twitter for finding jobs, getting to know others, etc. Twitter is a brilliant concept, but will Twitter and its search facility replace Google?

I don’t think so. While Google is used for searching for information and links, Twitter is used as a social media tool. But over the past few weeks, I have been using twitter for finding stuff for which I would usually have used Google. So, I think Twitter will have a moderate effect on Google. With twitter, one can easily find information and on the topic of his choice. And since everything on twitter is limited to 140 characters, I think Twitter will be more useful. And the user can also connect with people who are interested in the same topic.

So, here’s my conclusion : Twitter will affect Google. People will turn to twitter for finding an apartment, or finding help on how to feed their cat, and keeping up with the latest buzz. Google will be used for finding information.  But since Twitter is a network of people whereas Google results are collected by bots not humans, I believe Google will be affected by Twitter atleast a little. But Twitter will not completely replace Google.

What are your thoughts about this? Please share them with me in the comments below.

Want to hear more about Twitter, Google and internet marketing? Subscribe to my blog through RSS or through email.You can also follow me on twitter. My twitter username is @ganeshsrinivas.

You would have known that NameCheap recently conducted a huge contest on twitter. The contest was a huge success and many thousands of people participated in it. People usually hold contests in the traditional way. But NameCheap didn’t go for that. They held a contest on twitter, an idea which was new. During the contest, NameCheap gave away about 1020 domain names as prizes and 3 Dell notebooks for the winners. Even I won a domain when I answered one question correctly.

So, I decided to ask Michelle Greer who conducted the contest on twitter and she gladly obliged to answer my questions. Here is the full transcript of the interview.

1. How exactly did you get the idea of hosting a contest on twitter?

I initially showed our CEO Rick Kirkendall Zappo’s use of Twitter. I remember Tony Hsieh gave away shoes on Twitter, and how you had to follow @zappos on Twitter because hey, who wouldn’t want free shoes? Rick thought of the idea of giving away domain names with trivia every hour for 25 days, and I thought we should turn it into a contest with prizes at the end and a leader board.

2. I know that NameCheap’s first contest on twitter was held during Christmas last year because I participated in it. What was the initial response when the contest started?

It was crazy. We went from 200 to over 4000 followers in less than a month. We took turns monitoring it, and at one point, I got one marriage proposal and one offer to have a @namecheap baby. I have to be careful with the spelling of the questions and answers, because any misspelling gets an outroar from players. People literally lose sleep when we run these contests and they plan their workdays so they can always be at their computers when we ask a question. I’m glad they enjoy it, because we’d much rather run these contests than put out tons of ads.

3. How well did the contests promote the NameCheap brand?

The contest has been mentioned by just about every domaining blog, was in Mashable, O’Reilly Radar and Yahoo News, and was even mentioned by Evan Williams, the CEO of Twitter. I’d say it was a good success given what we put into it. I’ve also noticed the site traffic is consistently 20 percent higher as well.

4. I believe NameCheap doesn’t have any sort of affiliate program
but most other domain registrars do. Why?

Stay tuned. We know we have a lot of people who really like NameCheap and it is definitely in the works!

5. What do you think about promoting products or websites on twitter? To be exact, what do you think about twitter marketing?

Twitter is great for marketing, but it’s a communication tool. NameCheap uses Twitter for feedback on product offerings, basic support not sensitive to a person’s account, domain news, and other means. Looking at Twitter as a mere marketing tool is like looking at a cell phone as a marketing tool. NameCheap truly wants to make customers happy and Twitter is one more means for making that happen.

Thanks a lot for the interview, Michelle.

So, did you like the interview? Tell me what you think by commenting below. Stay tuned because I’m going to be writing more about twitter this week.

To get updates on more interviews and internet marketing tips, subscribe to my blog through RSS or through email. If you wish, you can also follow me on twitter. My twitter username is @ganeshsrinivas.

Two days ago, I found a very nice free ebook for download. The ebook is called “An Insider’s Guide to CPA Marketing Profits“. It is an 89 page, free report that shows exactly how you can make money online with CPA offers. CPA offers are offers like giving your email address and zip code in order to get a free iPod or xBox. But, that’s not all. There are a whole range of CPA offers to select and choose based on your niche. When the visitor fills out the offer form, you’ll get paid a commission. In this ebook, Gauher Chaudhry, at first, gives an introduction to CPA marketing. Then, he talks about everything from keyword research tools, landing pages and getting traffic to PPC and testing and tracking PPC campaigns. In the end, Chaudhry also provides a list of CPA networks which he works with and recommends them to the reader. I’ve not yet finished reading the book (still reading the introduction part), but I know that it would be very helpful because everything is explained in a simple and easy manner. If you are totally new to CPA marketing and are being confused by misinformation or information overload, then you should read this ebook. Download the free ebook here (yeah, its an affiliate link - there’s an affiliate program for this free ebook).

Here’s the video in which Gauher Chaudhry talks about CPA marketing:

If you liked this post, then make sure you subscribe to my blog through RSS or email. If you wish to hear from me every few hours, then the best thing for you to do is follow me on twitter (I’ll follow you back). All right then, have a great day.

Email has been the most common form of communication since, well, not since the ancient times, but since a few decades. Internet has changed a lot - now we have instant messaging, Twitter, Youtube and many other ways of communicating and promoting products on the internet.  But email still remains the best, the most popular and the most effective thing in online marketing.

Almost every internet marketing related blog or website says - Money is in the list. And that, my friends, is absolutely correct. The larger your list, the more success and profits you will enjoy. Internet marketing is basically, selling your own product, or selling someone else’s product to people in order to gain profits. In order to get customers, you need to bring them to your site through many means - social media sites, blogs, advertising, forums, building a list. Building a list is the best way to bring in customers and make sales. This is because a list contains emails of those people who are interested in knowing about and purchasing your product. The other forms of traffic are great too, but sometimes most of the times, the traffic that they bring isn’t targeted.

So, it is necessary for every internet marketer who is selling some product to start building a list from day one. Email marketing can be a powerful way of interacting with your customers-to-be.

To fully utilize the power of email marketing, you need the right email marketing software. Let me introduce you to Email Center UK which offers an innovative email marketing sofware platform that helps you to build a list, monitor it, keep in touch with your list, monitor your campaigns and sell your product successfully through email marketing.

Their product, called Maxemail, which is used by over 500 organizations to target, deliver, manage and track their email marketing programmes. It offers a whole range of awesome features but the one thing that I really think is superb is their viral marketing feature which allows you to utilize the power of Web 2.0 in combination with email marketing.

Take a look at their site and see if it is the right tool for you to successfully do email marketing.

The first thing you need, if you want to make money on the internet, is quality hosting. A good hosting company should be cheap, reliable, secure and should provide good customer support. However, finding the right host for you and your needs can be quite a difficult task. There are a lot of good hosts out there, but you have to go through all sorts of hassles to find the one that you like. Everyone wants the best deal for their buck, so finding such a hosting company can be time-consuming. However, there are web hosting review sites that can help you when you are looking for the perfect hosting you want. Let me introduce you to Kubus.net which provides Independent Web Hosting Reviews. I have seen a lot of websites that review various web hosts, but, in my opinion, this website is the best. There are a lot of things that set it apart from the others.

Kubus.net has reviews for a wide variety of web hosting solutions. Depending on the particular service or niche which your site caters, there are many Web Hosting Solutions ranging from blog hosts and small business hosting to VPS and Dedicated server hosting.

There are two very useful features that set this site apart from the rest. Firstly, Kubus.net provides a custom search tool for newbies and experienced webmasters. The newbie search tool is very helpful to those who are totally new to web hosts and don’t know any of the web hosting jargon. It asks simple questions based on the requirements of the person and presents them a list of hosts that meet their requirements. The Experienced Webmaster Search tool is suitable for those who are a little familiar with web hosting and have specific demands like bandwidth, type of server and server operating system. You can specify your monthly budget in both the search tools so that you get the right host with the features you want and see to that it is easy on your pocket.

The next great feature is that Kubus.net allows you to compare between different hosting companies if you ever get caught up in a dilemma between many good hosts. When each host is reviewed, a score is given to each host based on factors like price value, reliability, customer service, up time, performance, user feedback, etc. that it offers along with its pros and cons. Some really cool facts about the hosts are also given, like, the number of domains that it hosts and the company’s gain/loss during the previous month. Sometimes, coupon codes for specific packages are also given, if available, which discount the price on your hosting package. Customers are also allowed to give their feedback or comments on the web hosts. They also are going to launch a Web Hosting Directory on the site where different hosts are listed to help webmasters find the web host of their choice.

Kubus.net, in my opinion, is a really great web hosting review site. However, there is one thing that I hope they add to their site. I would like it if they included many coupon codes for each host so that webmasters can save on their money. Another good thing about Kubus.net is that they have no partnerships with any web hosting company. So the reviews that they do are not biased in any way, and are done by extensive research of the web hosts. Apart from that, the site is awesome in all aspects. If you are looking for a good host, then I recommend that you go to Kubus.net and find the host that fits your requirements.

Today, February 13 is my birthday. I turn 15 today. LOL! Today would be a rather quite day for me as I don’t plan on holding any b’day parties (I’m not a kid anymore, am I?). And, I’m not feeling that happy this year, so I’d be very grateful if you guys could drop a comment wishing me happy birthday.

Maybe I should take a few resolutions since I have turned 15. Here are a few of them:

• Firstly, unclutter my daily life. Form a timetable for myself that I can follow easily.
• Try to learn all my lessons (because I’m going to take my public exams next year, and everyone says that those exams will decide my life, I don’t think they’re that important, but I still need to concentrate a bit more on them).
• Become physically fit (I’m rather lean).
• Earn well from my blogs and sites so that I can buy myself a laptop or some gaming console.

I hope I haven’t been boring you down with my talk. A word to all of you who read my blog: I know that I haven’t been posting lately on this blog, so I’m going to get back on track and start providing good content. So watch out for some new and interesting posts!

Want to give me a birthday present? Well, you can subscribe to my blog through email or follow me on twitter (I’ll also follow you) and I will consider that as a present.

This is a guest post by Garry Conn. This post is a bit short, but what it talks about is really important. In the next post, I plan to write more about SEO and niche sites.

In the business of Internet marketing you should have many best friends. However, one of the more important elements that can give an Internet marketer success are search engines, specifically Google.

The online business world is very similar to the offline business world. Many of the same components in the offline business world apply to online business as well. One of those elements is exposure. In the offline world, is most cases a business owner will have to pay to have his business, products or services exposed to targeted people.

In the online world, you can get ten times the exposure than you would in the offline business world and not even have to pay a dime for it. This free exposure of course comes from search engines. The value of ranking well in search engines in many ways can not be measured.

Search engines give you the opportunity to gain more exposure to your business, products and services. From there, it is your job to creatively present your business to the targeted traffic to gain high conversions.

My advice to you if you’re wanting to gain more exposure in search engines is to carefully invest time into learning more about each search engine. I would strongly recommend learning about Google and reading all the documentation they provide to publishers. Many people feel like SEO (search engine optimization) is a super big mystery and really it isn’t.

Google openly provides all the documentation needed in order for you to rank well in their organic listings. To make things even easier for publishers, Google even provides people with specialized Webmaster Tools. Ultimately before you push forward on any online venture, I strongly recommend that you invest time into learning the basics of ranking in search engines. They are a very powerful and free way to get your business, products and services exposed to thousands of targeted people.

Best Regards,
Garry Conn
www.GarryConn.com

Finally, after a long wait, I am going to announce the contest winners. So, without further ado, let me announce the winners.

Contest Winners

The winners were picked using the list randomizer at Random.org.

Winners : Please mail me using the contact form on this blog in order to claim your prizes. If I do not receive an email from you within a week, I would select another person as the winner.

Ad spots

• One 468×60 Banner ad in the header on Garry Conn.com for one month ($70) - aspaz125@*****.com
• One 300×250 Mid-page banner ad in the sidebar on Garry Conn.com for one month ($80) - simonjspurr@*****.com
• 125×125 Ad space for one month on Online Bull ($20) - sandracobb@*****.com
• 125×125 Ad space for one month on Desmond Blog ($30) - admin@neissuh.com
• 125×125 Ad space for one month on Blogging Kid ($20) - stacy@discounter*****.com
• 125×125 Ad space for one month on Let’s Sermo ($15) - mtprn77@*****.com
• 125×125 Ad space for one month on Blog Setup ($20) - khalidkarim72@*******.com
• 125×125 Ad space for two months on WebdotGeek.com ($90) - tsinfield@emaze********.com

Text links

• 2 x Text link ad for one month on Online Bull ($20) - sueblimely@*****.com and aspaz125@*****.com

Reviews

• One Review by Online Bull (myself) ($30) - rajaie.alkorani+onlinebull@*****.com
• One Review on Frogstr ($25) - tsinfield@emaze********.com

Ebooks and Information products

• 2 x “Flip Noobs” from Flip Noobs - Make Money Flipping Websites ($30) - sherrygo@rocket****.com and harishbharadhan@*****.com
• 4 x “Work Smart, Get Rich” from Make Money Online ($60) - farrhad16@*****.com, sherrygo@rocket****.com, ad***@niessuh and harishbharadhan@*****.com
• 2 x “Blog Comment Blueprint” from Linkers Blog ($20) - sherrygo@rocket****.com and wrightona50@*****.com

Themes and Designing services

• 1 x “Ultimate Blogging Theme Limited License Package” from Ultimate Blogging Theme ($67) - aspaz125@*****.com
• 1 x “Direct Response Templates” from Direct Response Templates ($37) - sueblimely@*****.com
• 1 x Custom Logo Design from Mr. Javo ($50) - harishbharadhan@*****.com

Courses and Memberships

• 1 x “Traffic Rush Course Package” from Caroline Middlebrook ($47) - simonjspurr@*****.com

First of all, congratulations to the winners! It looks like those who accumulated the most number of tickets, won the most number of prizes.

So, if you won anything, contact me using the contact form and I will send the prizes to you.

I have exciting stuff planned for you. I’m going to write about niches sites and stuff like that. I am also going to release an ebook about building niche sites to my subscribers. I’ve completed 7000 words till now (don’t worry, it will be easy to read and follow). So, look out for some exciting posts and stuff on my blog in the coming days.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog through RSS or through email.

Taken from Flickr

Hey there everybody. Merry Christmas to all of you! How are you celebrating Christmas? I would love to know about it.

Now, you might be wondering about the contest results. Due to the low number of participants, I have decided to extend the contest upto January 3rd. I will announce the winners on January 5th. Right now, there are very few participants. So, if you join now, you are sure to win atleast one prize. So head over to the contest post and earn some points.

I’m going to be pretty busy this whole week as I have my monthly test coming up. You might not believe this, but I don’t have holidays during the holiday season except on December 25th and January 1st (schools here are very strict).

But don’t worry. I’m going to release a free ebook about “niche sites”. And I’m also going to release something special along with it (any guesses?).

Make sure you subscribe to my blog to receive the latest updates and goodies from me.