techne-eikon.com

This article is a guest post by Teeg, of SUComments.com

The first thing to remember about web 2.0 is that the web is no longer driven by whatever businesses decide to put up a website. At one time, the programmer was king, and businesses were forward-thinking if they created a web presence. Now, just about every business you can think of has a website, including the construction company working on our local mall?!?

Yesterday’s websites were huge, clunky thinks, which they could be, because most people had slow internet connections. Once someone got to your page, you knew they would likely read the content, if for no other reason than they were waiting for the next page to load. With connection speeds that could take a minute and a half or more per page, yesterday’s web design called for having a lot of different content on one page, much like a newspaper or some magazines.

When internet connections got faster, people discovered the joys of visiting page after page looking for their favorite topics. Websites that wanted to catch the attention of these users soon discovered that yesterday’s layouts weren’t working. People weren’t forced to sit and read a long page while they waited for the new page to open, they could hop on a page, see if it caught their interest, and hop off. Today, the average visitor spends less than 2 seconds on a web page. That means that you have about 1 second to catch and keep their attention. For a website designed for today’s visitors, think presentation instead of newspaper.

Have you ever watched a good presenter? He doesn’t put his whole speech up at the beginning of the program and leave it up the whole time. Instead he brings a pile of slides or power point pages, and presents 3 to 5 pieces of information on each slide. This is the perfect example for a business website. Consider each static page you create (pages like your About and Contact page, Directions to your business, and any other pages where the content remains static) as a new slide. Does the page grab your attention for 1 second? Do the important facts on the page stand out? Is there little enough information that the visitor won’t get overwhelmed and leave? Finally, and most importantly, do you grab their attention enough that they will want to click through to the next page?

This is one of the most important parts of todays websites. If the presenter gets up and tells you what the presentation is about and it doesn’t hold your interest, it’s unlikely that you’ll stay for the rest of the speech, especially if there’s something better you could be doing with your time. The internet is like a huge conference, where all the speakers are presenting at once. If I don’t catch something on a page that’s important or interesting enough to hold my attention, I’ll go to the next presenter. Even if you’re selling a product or running an off-line business, if I don’t catch a piece of information that sets you apart from the others, I won’t stay.

If you want to try this for yourself, I suggest using StumbleUpon as the easiest way to quickly visit a lot of sites with similar content. Using a web search also works, but then you’ll have to keep coming back to the search. Either way, look up a topic, or choose a topic on SU to look up, and start looking at pages. Give yourself just enough time to see the page and click the stumble (or back) button, and continue until a page catches your eye. Now look back at your website and imagine you’re a visitor coming to it the same way you just visited all the other websites. As a stranger, would you spend time on your page? Or would you go back and look for something different?

Teeg is a StumbleUpon expert, having held a Top Stumbler position for several months, before moving on to write SUComments.com, where she provides valuable insight and advice for the beginning Stumbler.

It is well known that Google prefers it that we use the no-follow tag on our blogs. The premise is simple, and on the whole I have to agree with it. In principle. If your not familiar with the no-follow tag, it essentially tells Google not to follow a particular link, and by extension, not to share your PR with the other end of the link. The stated purpose is to help prevent irrelevant link juice from diluting the search engine results.

Here’s how it works: let’s say that I mention your blog in one of my posts, and nice guy that I am, provide a link to you. An in post link is fine, as it is (usually) topically related, and will not have the no-follow tag attached to it. Comments, on the other hand, are a whole different story. If I should mosey on over to your blog, read something interesting, and decide to comment on it, any linking from my name to my site in the comments section of your blog will be a no-follow link by default. This varies a bit from one platform to the next, but it is the default for most blogging systems such as WordPress.

This can be a good thing, as it prevents hit and run commenting from people with lovely names like “buy-viagra-here”.

On the other hand, it does not reward bloggers for participating, and this is where it gets a little sticky. Some bloggers took enough exception to this policy and practise that they created plugins for the express purpose of removing the no-follow attribute from all links on a blog. To date, I have used one of these plugins, as I appreciate comments on my blog, and don’t mind giving a little link juice back. To me, it’s the cyber equivalent of buying you a cup of coffee as a thanks for your part in the conversation.

That has changed, at least for the time being.

It started with a little Search Engine Results Pages experiment. You may recall that a few weeks ago I wrote an article titled “I Haz Ginger, and it is Cool”. Well, one day I decided to see where (or even if) that article was ranking for the search phrase “Netvibes Ginger”. Keep in mind here that I didn’t SEO this article for that term, I was just curious. Surprise! It did rank, coming in at #77 in the Google SERPs! That’s when the idea for my little experiment was born.

If you have been following the Internet Marketing trends of late, many of the new teachings are centered around Web 2.0 and Social Marketing. I decided to try out just one of the techniques, and see if I could influence the rankings for that article one way or the other. I won’t go into the gory details here, but the net result was that all my efforts resulted in no attributable change to that article’s rankings. What the heck is going on?

My first thought was that the gurus weren’t telling me the whole story. They might even be flat out lying. Not a pleasant thought, to be sure. Then I came across a post explaining why Wayne Liew decided to set his blog back to a no-follow blog. After reading his article, I embarked upon a research project, to try and determine the truth of his concerns.

While I didn’t find anything definitive from Google, I did run across some rumours that Google was penalizing blogs that use the do-follow plugins. Looking at Google’s TOS, and some statements made at Webmaster Central, I have to say that it is possible, as it is completely in line with their primary concerns: the sanctity of the Google Search Engine Results.

So now I embark on a new experiment. I have disabled the do-follow plugin for techne-eikon for the time being. I’m giving it a month, and then we will see what happens, not just to my Netvibes Ginger article, but to t-e in general. Will I gain near instant PR, as one fellow claimed? Will I rank higher for various keywords, now that I am a no-follow kind of fellow? We will have to see. I will report my conclusions when the experiment is over, and let you know what I think at that time.

But while we’re waiting, what do you think? Leave me a comment, and let me know. Even if I can’t at this time give you a do-follow link, know that I wish I could, and am very grateful to anyone who does comment. This policy of mine may change in a month or so, so you might get the link love anyway You never know…

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A business, any business, lives and thrives on numbers. For an internet business, those numbers include traffic, click through, and conversion rates, but they all add up to one number: your profit. But what numbers should you be looking at when you are evaluating a new opportunity?

The first figures we usually look at start with dollar signs. How much is this going to cost me, and how much can I make? While these are important to know, and certainly they aren’t the first numbers we should be looking at., these are the things that all too often drive us to a buying decision. Because of this, too many would be businessmen are doomed to fail before they ever get started.

You see, the marketers who are selling the opportunity are looking to make money, just like you. The difference is that they have already looked at the other information, and know that most of it is boring, especially when compared to potential profits. They know that we are greedy. We want big bucks, and we want them now!

Case in point is Frank Kern’s recent Mass Control campaign. This has to be one of the most heavily marketed products that I have seen in the Internet Marketing space in a very long time. Frank started the campaign by describing how his work has made multiplied millions of dollars in 24 hours of sale time. The campaign them went on to tell you and I that the course would teach us how he did it, so that we could apply his strategies to our businesses.

On it goes, with some (very good) videos getting released, videos that gave away information. Looking good so far. Then came video #3 (I think?). It’s titled “$36,000 in Four Days (Disco Version)”. In this video, which was little more than a testimonial, Frank gave one small part of the course to Michael Koenigs, with the instructions to follow, with no help from the master (Frank). Michael followed the instructions (more or less), and made $36,000 over 4 days, for 3 hours of work. That’s heady stuff, but is it an accurate representation of how this one strategy will work for your business? Probably not, and I’ll tell you why:

Our attention was drawn to the wrong numbers. At least the wrong numbers to base a buying decision on. We were told that Michael was going to try the technique out on three small lists, totalling (if memory serves) about 15, 000 subscribers. I know one of the lists was 8,000, but I’m not sure about the other two. He sent out the copy and paste email, and some follow up emails, and four days later is $36,000 richer. And he only worked on this about 3 hours.

However, in the video, Michael showed us actual screen captures from his shopping cart software, and here is where I got interested. It’s easy to see the dollar totals for each day’s sales, as they are pointed out to us. But scanning the rest of the page, it’s not hard to tell that his products sell for $500 to $1000 apiece! It’s not hard to make large amounts of cash when you are selling a big ticket item. The numbers that I found more interesting were the actual number of sales per list.

But before I get into that, just a quick disclaimer: I’m doing most of this off of memory, just because I don’t want to watch the video again. So if the numbers aren’t entirely accurate, you know why. They should be reasonably representative, though.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s what I remember: from the 8,000 list, he made about 17 sales. Assuming that the price tag on that particular product is $1000, that’s $17,000, which isn’t too bad at all. But what if the product was a $20 ebook instead? That’s only $320, a far cry from thousands. Another consideration is this: 17 sales on a list of 8,000 is a conversion rate of slightly less than one quarter of a percent, which could be close to the industry average for his market. Truth be told, I have no idea, because I’m not in that market. What I do know is that a percentage that small sucks in my market. So really, I don’t know if his conversion was any good at all. Was it higher than his usual? Lower? Or about the same?

These are the kinds of things that I want to know before I’m going to invest in any business opportunity, and the sort of factors that you should be considering before laying your hard earned cash down.

Greed, or the desire to profit, is natural, and can be a critical factor in the psychology of your success. But when evaluating any business, you have to put that aside, lest your desire lead you into falling for yet another big numbers game, a game in which the big numbers only work for the seller, and not you, the consumer of said product.

Here’s a free affiliate marketing ebook for you to download. It used to be a paid product, and a quick scan of the contents shows that it ain’t no lightweight “buy our product to be come really rich” kind of book. I just downloaded it, so I can’t say much, except that a quick look at the table of contents tells me what I’m doing this weekend.

Here’s a quick look at the table of contents for Sections 1 and 2:

• Section 1: Affiliate Marketing 101 – Preparing for Success
• 1.1 - What is Affiliate Marketing?
• 1.2 - How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
• 1.3 - The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
• 1.4 - Separating Fact from Fiction
• 1.5 - How Does an Affiliate Earn Money?

• Pay Per Sale:
• Pay Per Lead:
• Pay Per Action:
• Pay Per Click:

• Section 2: Finding Profitable Affiliate Opportunities
• 2.1 - What Interests You?
• 2.2 - Researching the Market
• 2.2.1 - Start with a High Level Overview
• 2.2.2 - Measure the Demand
• 2.2.3 - Check out the Competition
• 2.2.4 What is Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
• 2.2.5 Market Research Summary
• 2.3 – How to Identify Merchants with Good Affiliate Programs
• 2.4 - Selecting the Best Merchants to Promote
• 2.4.1 If You Were a Customer
• 2.4.2 Does it make Sense for Your Website Visitors?
• 2.4.3 Sales and Reporting Considerations
• 2.4.4 How Many Return Days?
• 2.4.5 What is the Merchant’s Reversal Rate?
• 2.4.6 Payment Considerations
• Do They Offer Custom Payouts for Top Affiliates?
• 2.4.7 Check out the Merchant’s Feedback
• What are Their Customers Saying?
• 2.4.8 What Kind of Marketing Material Do They Offer?
• Section 2 Resources
• Tools to Measure Keyword/Market Demand:
• Affiliate Networks:
• Affiliate Forums and Blogs:
• Keywords - The Foundation of Your Success

You can get the whole book here: High Performance Affiliate Marketing

Cheers, Marc

Like so many other people, I subscribe to way too many newsletters, making for a very cluttered and noisy inbox. One of these newsletters comes from Michael Bungay Stanier from Box of Crayons. I like Michael’s newsletter because it is usually packed with good information, and I don’t get a new one every second day. Unfortunately, in the latest newsletter, I have to say that Michael made a mistake, and it’s not a trivial one. You see, Michael created a free e-book, and as things stand now I will never read it.

Here’s the problem: the online marketplace is getting very crowded. In the last month or so, there have been so many new courses and ebooks offered that it’s making my head spin. In addition to this, many of the marketers have discovered the power of video, and are releasing stuff for us to watch at a furious rate. The problem? The clock is ticking. I (and I suspect, many of you) just don’t have the time to go through all of these materials. And along comes Michael, tossing his ebook onto the pile.

His latest newsletter was filled with a list of useful products for me to peruse, the last one in the list being his free ebook. “Cool”, I think, and proceed to click the link. It takes me to an Order Confirmation Form from paypal. The first line on the form is as follows: “All Prices in US Dollars”. Erm… What happened to free? The next line tells me that free offers do not need Credit Card details, so that answers that question, but according to the rule of first impressions, my enthusiasm has taken a big hit. My “no” program is now running.

Proceeding down the page, I see that in this case free does not mean easy. The vast majority of ebooks can be downloaded for the price of your name and email address. Simple, fast, and easy. Not so with this one. The paypal order page wants my Full Name, my email (these are ok), AND my day phone and my full address. If I was paying for the product, this would be acceptable, but for a free ebook? Too much work, and you’re asking for details that are, quite frankly, not necessary to the transaction.

Here’s the point I want to make: if you are marketing anything, and I mean anything at all, you must make the process of getting your product into your customers hands as easy and painless as possible. That the product is free makes absolutely no difference at all. People are naturally wary of any offer, and if you make it difficult, or ask for something in return that you have absolutely no right to, you will drive prospects and customers away at a furious rate.

As I stated before, I don’t have much time available to me. To have to stop what I’m doing, fill out a form with details that I don’t want to give out, and proceed through three or more clicks just to get yet another ebook is excessive, and that’s why I won’t be reading Michael’s book. Based on the quality of his newsletter, I’m sure that it’s a very useful book, and honestly, based on his writings I am almost tempted to go through it anyway. If I didn’t have to fill in my phone and address, I probably would have gone through it anyway. But I do, so I won’t.

To sum it up, Michael’s mistake boils down to one thing: using a system designed to process cash for goods transactions for a free product. The top line, “All prices in US dollars”, activated my “no” program. It was all downhill from there, and ultimately killed the sale. The phone and address requirements were just the bits of evidence that the program needed to substantiate its paranoid scepticism. My advice? Re-release the ebook, using a simple name and email form, and save the paypal page for his paid offerings.

For the rest of us, let’s take a lesson from this, and always remember to make the transaction process as smooth and easy as possible. To do otherwise is to drive customers away, and that’s probably not the result we are looking for, is it?

/*EDIT*/ Unfortunately, I misspelled Michael’s name in the title. It is supposed to be written a before e, not the other way around. Sorry ’bout that…

I only just discovered Netvibes Coriander release just over a month ago, and was instantly hooked. This Friday last, I was offered an invite to Netvibes Ginger private beta, and if I was hooked before, I’m a flat out junkie now. If you don’t know what Netvibes is, let me take a moment to give you the quick and dirty on it.

Netvibes’ by-line is “(re)mix the web”, and that is exactly what it allows you to do. Your Netvibes page is a personalized home page that allows you to put all your online stuff in one place, making it easy to access without the need for a million bookmarks. There are also pre-configured widgets, tabs, and universes that you can add to your profile, making it easy to discover new stuff on the web. If you haven’t tried Netvibes out yet, you should.

The upcoming Ginger release adds a social element to Netvibes, but I’ll get into that in a moment. First I’d like to tell you about one of the new features that I truly appreciate: the ability to separate my page into a private page, and a universe, or public page. One reason that I never even considered publicizing my old page is because I had the email module on there, and I didn’t want to show my emails to the world. Now, with this new private/public feature, it’s not a problem.

I have my gmail, facebook, and other profiles on my private page for easy access, and anything that I think would be interesting or useful to the world at large in my public universe. Now I can start inviting friends to come and visit my page, and easily add modules, and share some of the cool things that I find here and there across the ‘Net.

I Haz no Friends

Perhaps the most important new feature that Netvibes is adding to Ginger is a suite of social functions, centered around the ability to add friends, and follow them. To note: these are two separate (though related) functions. The other thing to note is that the friends function seems to be for Ginger users only. As everybody will be upgraded to Ginger soon, this isn’t a huge issue, except for reviewers like me. To put it another way: I am the only person in my circle who is using Ginger, and consequently have no friends.

But, in the spirit of thoroughness, I went looking for some new friends. I started with Mike, the kind individual who sent me the invite in the first place. Unfortunately, there seems to be a few Mikes using the new system, and I have no idea as to which one he is. Taking a random guess, I added a “Mike” to my friends list, not because I thought he was the guy I was looking for, but because he has an interesting universe. This particular Mike seems to be into food, and that was good enough for me. Voila! I am now friends with Mike

My search continued, and I now have two Mikes and a Janos in my friends list. I don’t actually know any of them, and herein lies one small peeve that I have with the system. I have no way to message them, and introduce myself, or explain why this weirdo from Canada is randomly adding them to his list.

Adding a friend is simple: you can either authorize Netvibes to search your email for other users, or you can type a name in the search field directly. Once you find who you are looking for, just click the icon beside their name. This will bring up some profile information, with a link to their public page, an add friend button, and an rss button.

The add friend button is self explanatory, but clicking the rss button doesn’t do exactly what I thought it might. When I clicked Mike’s rss button, a small window popped up, asking me if I wanted to add Mike’s feed to my page. I okayed it, and got an rss module that listed his recent public activity, which brings me to my next point. The new Netvibes allows you to update your status, creating a Twitter-like micro blogging environment. People can, by adding your rss feed to their universe, follow you around, Twitter style.

I Haz Stars in my Eyes

Yet another nice feature is the ability to star interesting items. Starring an item is similar to adding an item to your favourites, plus it gets added to your feed for all your friends to see and share. Unfortunately, you cannot add comments to your friends items, so communications between people is hampered. I would like to see some system to allow me to communicate a little more directly with the people in my contact list, similar in style to Facebook or Digg.

I would also like the ability to initiate some private communications with an individual, rather than just hoping that they are actually following me. The micro blogging updates are cool, but not always the most appropriate venue for communications.

Overall, I am thoroughly enamoured with Ginger. There is one more feature coming up. It hasn’t been implemented yet, but Drive promises to add one more element to the ‘Vibes experience: the ability to share files between friends. Drive will provide 2GB of online storage for each Netvibes user, with the ability to add more. The files that you upload can be shared with your friends.

I Haz a Thought

Overall, I am well and truly pleased with Ginger, and as I said at the outset, am now a confirmed Netvibes junkie.

Netvibes Ginger is a huge improvement on an already excellent product, especially with the addition of the social components. Unfortunately, though these features are a good start, they fall a little short of the mark. I like the ability to subscribe to people’s feeds, to be able to star items that really catch my interest, and I really like the separation of private and public pages.

However, the lack of communications ability between users beyond subscribing to their updates is a demerit in my books. The Twitter like functionality is cool, but with Twitter modules available for your page, there is little reason to switch to the Netvibes system. While you can export any module to your blog, there is still the issue of either switching from one to the other, or duplicating your micro blogging across platforms.

You cannot build a solid online community without fairly transparent communications. I understand that such a system is not without its dangers, but as so many other communities have demonstrated, the price is well worth it. I can only hope that these features will be added at a later date.

All that said, it is my considered opinion that Ginger is very cool, and well worth the small amount of time it takes to set up your page. To sum it up in one short sentence, I haz Ginger, and it is good.

You can check out my Netvibes Ginger page here, and when you have one of your very own, make sure to add me as a friend.

A little while ago I wrote a post detailing some computer troubles I had, entitled “New disaster creates new site“, in which I had high praise for the FoxMarks Bookmark Sync add-on. Well, I just upgraded to the latest, greatest version of the add-on yesterday, and the love affair almost came to a screaming halt. You see, once the upgrade was complete, FM asked me to set up the add-on as though this were a new install. Puzzled but trusting, I proceeded in good faith. When I was done, so were my bookmarks. They had vanished into the vastness of cyberspace.

Here’s what happened (as I understand it): somewhere between version 1 and version 2, FM changed servers, so that the V2 sync files are stored somewhere else. If you haven’t done the upgrade yet, don’t worry, just make sure that when you go through the set up routine, you instruct FM to upload your existing bookmarks to the server, NOT the other way around. If you have already done the upgrade, and lost your bookmarks, FM has very kindly supplied a fix. It’s a bit of a hoop jump, but painless for all that.

Here’s the link: Foxmarks: Error: Missing Bookmarks After v2 Install

Needless to say, the love affair continues, for I of all people know that every relationship has it’s ups and downs…

You may have heard about Digg’s recent change in algorithm, an effort to limit the “gaming” of Digg’s system of voting a story up or down. If you’re really in the know, you may even be aware that scribd.com has put a halt to html uploads. The express purpose, as stated on the scribd blog, is to put a stop to “abuse by Internet marketers”. More to the point, to stop the practise of embedding links in a document that lead back to the spammer’s site.

Both of these examples are reactions to an all too common situation: Internet Marketers who have no understanding of the medium in which they are operating, or worse, marketers who don’t care about the medium. Web 2.0 is a social, community driven medium, and as such can present powerful opportunities for the marketer to expand his customer base. But that is not the best use of this medium. Rather, we should be striving to use the internet to establish a system of better contact with customers. Quality contact over quantity contact.

Let me explain what I mean. To date, the vast majority of internet marketing practises have been centered around the concept of pushing your message in front of as many people as possible. This attitude has resulted in an overabundance of banner ads, popups, popunders, spam, and free programs with bundled spyware and the like. All designed to shove the marketer’s message in front of as many sets of eyes as possible, in the hopes that a small percentage will actually be interested. This is the “quantity contact” aspect that I referred to.

The new internet is putting power back where it belongs: in the hands of the user. This means that they have the ability to ignore you, should you annoy them too much. Herein comes the concept of “quality contact”. Web 2.0 is about user contribution, and as marketers, if we are not contributing something, then we are by default spamming. Instead of trying to get a sales page voted up on Digg, the web savvy marketer will instead submit a genuinely useful how-to article. Something that a reader can take away and use to solve a problem immediately, without having to buy your e-book. If your solution works, some of them will want the whole package. They will become your customer, no spamming required.

This is an organic approach, and one that will build trust between you and your customer. More importantly, by using social media you become an adviser, or perhaps even a friend. Results may not happen as quickly as with other methods, but they will grow much bigger, and last longer, because they will be genuine.

In so far as Digg’s algorithm change and scibd’s policy change go, they are reasonable reactions to a problem that is having a negative impact on their user base, and as such I can’t say that I blame them for taking these actions. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that they will be as effective as they hope, particularly in Digg’s case. Digg’s new system favours diversity in voting, which is to say that the more random Diggs a story gets, the better. On the flip side, if a story or site gets dugg by the same group of friends on a regular basis, those diggs won’t count as much toward pushing the story onto the front page.

Scott Carp of Publishing 2.0 has written a better explanation of the digg’s new algorithm, and makes some good points as to what may work, and what may not. If you want to better understand this particular situation, I highly recommend his article.

For myself, as an internet marketer who hates spam, I see one potential flaw here, one that affects me (and marketers like me) directly. Let us suppose that I write a brilliant article, and post it here. I submit it to Digg, and my friends read it, and agree with me: it’s freaking brilliant. So they digg it, too. Under this new system, my ethical friends are actually working against me. Now this is a problem, for me at least. Again, I can’t blame digg, because I know that as far as marketers go, my friends and I are in the minority. So in this instance, the innocent are punished alongside the guilty. And it’s not just marketers who are going to get hit by this: it’s anybody who’s friends regularly digg their blog. That’s a lot of people, most of whom are not marketers in any way, shape, or form.

Side note: a short review will show that I have pushed (and voted on) my share of crap, and not that long ago. I freely admit it, and as such am aware that I was part of the problem. Without going into the whole story, I simply decided that this was not how I wanted to operate my business, and have since stopped. The reason is simple: first, I have at least some small understanding of the medium in which I have chosen to operate, and second, I decided to put integrity over dollars. ‘Nuff said.

These motions from digg and scribd are just the beginning of the story. Other sites and companies will try different strategies to deal with gaming, ranging from a shrug of the shoulders (what can I do about it?) to draconian measures that will ruin that site’s user experience across the board. Over time, the market will level itself out, and the net will have changed again, just like it did for email spam.

The spammers and gamers will find new ways to abuse the system, and the ethical marketers will continue to build lasting relationships with their customers. In the end, the internet will be a better place for it all, but the only ones who will benefit over the long term will be the users, and those marketers who choose organic growth over the promise of instant riches.

As we saw in the first post of the series, “What is Web 2.0?”, Web 2.0 is more about the people on the internet, than the technologies of this new medium. Yet we cannot have a discussion of Web 2.0 without addressing the various technologies involved, for it is these self same tools that are making Web 2.0 collaborations possible in the first place. And because smarter people than I have said it better, I will continue this post with a couple of videos that explain things.

The first is focused of the technologies of Web 2.0, but I did notice that, due to the very nature of these technologies, you cannot separate the people of the web from the tools that are bringing them together. The video (whether or not the producer intended it as such) highlights this fact in its presentation. The second video is, in my opinion, simply brilliant. It defines Web 2.0 from a human perspective, and is a must see, if you really want to understand the new internet, and where it is going.

These new technologies are bringing Internet Marketers closer to their customers in ways that were virtually impossible before now. In the next post in this series, we will begin to examine how and why the Internet Marketer should embrace Web 2.0 as a vital component of our daily business model.

I finally finished the Simpleolgy Blogging Course, and overall, I have to give it a couple of thumbs up. The course is comprised of 15 short video lessons, with each lesson having a short quiz associated with it, just to check your understanding of the materials presented. Each video is 3 to 6 minutes long, making them easily digestible chunks of information. The course page is well laid out, making it easy to keep track of your progress. I found this feature especially useful, as over the holidays just past, I neglected to keep up with the dailies, having in fact skipped about two weeks of anything online.

The course is self paced, so if you miss a day, you haven’t actually missed anything. Just pick up where you left off, and keep going. The Simpleology Blogging Course is aimed at the rank beginner who knows nothing about blogging. The first lesson, entitled “What is a Blog?”, sets the tone for the rest of the course, with a clear explanation and simple illustrations to highlight various points. The following 14 lessons build on that platform, explaining the various elements that make up a blog, and continue on with lessons on content creation, SEO, and monetization of your blog.

As stated earlier, this course is for the beginner. It assumes that you nothing about blogging, and takes it from there, so if this describes you, this course is probably one of the better places you can start. There a couple of things, relatively minor, that I didn’t like about the course, though. Some of the videos end prematurely, leaving you staring at the summary screen for up to two minutes. The other thing that I didn’t like was that any URL’s referenced in the videos went by too quickly to be effectively copied out, though in all fairness, hitting the pause button addresses this issue. It’s also worth noting that the accompanying pdf file contains all the referenced sites for your convenience.

Other good points: the course also comes in audio format, allowing you to listen to the lessons from your ipod. Also included are several bonus files, including interviews with professional blogger.

Overall, this is a well structured course, aimed at the beginning blogger, and could also serve as a useful review for the intermediate blogger who has become caught up in all the latest trends, and lost sight of the basics (guilty!)

The offer still stands from Simpleology: review the course, and get access to the course for free. Which, when you think about it, kind of makes sense, in that you can’t review something that you haven’t tried for yourself, now can you? It doesn’t get much simpler than that