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Thursday, October 26, 2006

CreamAid Con?

Well, I've mentioned link baiting around these parts before - and I mentioned you need to take everything you read on the web with a pinch of salt. It seems that CreamAid.com and their McDonald's campaign may have been a hoax, part of an even more masterful link-baiting campaign to gain the CreamAid site links.

According to the expert hosts of WebMasterRadio.FM's Strike Point, rumors are that McDonalds don't know anything about this - which would point to hoax if it's true. Listen to the show, a few minutes in there's an ad break, and Mikkel and Jason D speak about it directly after that. If it was a hoax and a viral link baiting campaign - well done. I should go back and put a link condom on CreamAid's link in spite, but hell, they earned it - well done.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Flashmobs. Like Seriously, Still?

We'll, let's take a break from next things and look at a past thing for a change. This was a big thing for a while way back in 2003, at least it was if you were a complete prat. Why it's Flash mobs of course - the real life gathering of webiots to perform mainly successful attempts to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution.

Why do I bring this pointless idiocy up now. Well I was just sent a YouTube of one that happened barely two weeks ago in London. I thought we were past this shit now, but apparently it still goes on. Take a look at what happened at Liverpool Street Station on October 11th.

Now, I like to delude myself once in a while that as a species we have at least a miniscule attempt of doing something worthwhile before we're wiped off the face of the earth. Seeing that though, I know that optimism is misplaced. Frankly, the time has come to close the internet, scour the earth with fire and let the cockroaches have a go at evolving - they can't do any worse.

Facile, vapid and a nuisance for anyone in the vicinity - Flashmobs are still here. Just thought I'd point that out - now, back to MySpace. Oh.

Monday, October 16, 2006

New Ways Of Pimping Out Me Blogs Part 2

Following on from the last post about the new wave of money earning opportunities for bloggers, here's another one I've just spotted (Via Mefi). Creamaid is a marketing / blog widget, tool, Web 2.0 thingy. For instance, you can earn $10 by blogging about McDonald's and installing a widget on your blog post.

The service looks very new, there's not a lot of cash opportunities attached to it at present, but it's an interesting idea. It's sort of like the PayPerPost model and ReviewMe but with an added Web 2.0 spin.

From a promoting your site point of view, they could do with a bit of work on getting the most from the actual blog posts people are making. Not all the campaigns include URLs to the host companies in the actual blog review / conversation. The links are there in the Flash widget, but it's Flash - search spiders tend to ignore it. Spiders. Can't. Read. Flash. Uh-oh...

But, that's me with my get them links mentality, as a buzz generator, word of mouth sort of thing I'm sure it could do well. The name's a bit funny mind - sounds mildly adult to my childish ears, but, a silly non-descriptive name is just what you need to succeed in Internet 2.0

Saturday, October 14, 2006

New Ways Of Pimping Out Me Blogs

Pimping me blogs for dosh We all know you can make money from blogging, whether it be selling advertising, having sponsored links or sending people off to affiliate sales. A whole new wave of selling wares is upon us, and it's all about pimping out your blog posts for cash, and I don't mean splogging.

Sponsoring, blog posts has gone on for a while in lesser forms. I've seen people offering to do blog posts for cash / links on a couple of webmaster forums - it's not a new idea. However, over the last month I've seen a few things that are pointing to a growth in the industry and a new way of making a few pints for long established and skint blog owners.

I got excited this week when I received an email about my last post on this site.

"I found your blog, and am interested in sponsoring some posts on your blog on behalf of our advertisers. I read the post about '10 million dollar homepage knockoffs' and enjoyed your writing. We have 5 different sponsors that are interested in sponsoring posts on your blog."

This ~~spam~~ contact message was from a new service called Blog To Profit. The rest of the message was obviously cut and pasted, fine - I'm no stranger to that. I had a look, feeling they sent me the message as they'd actually looked at what I do.

The feeling of self-congratulatory warmth didn't last long though. The next day I had a message to my Real Cool Time blog, the sender looked familiar. I open up the ~~spam~~ contact message and got this:

"I found your blog, and am interested in sponsoring some posts on your blog on behalf of our advertisers. I read the post about 'Yo La Tengo' and enjoyed your writing. We have 5 different sponsors that are interested in sponsoring posts on your blog."

Ho hum, ok, so I feel for the old "fluff 'em with praise" routine for a few hours thinking someone actually had made a decision based on what I do here - I wouldn't be the first.

I had a look around at what they're offering. I'm not sure how good their service or prices are, as there's little at the site about that side. However, it's certainly a tempting thing to do to earn money from a blog, and a hundred times easy than getting into the BlogAds programme.

In a similar area, Techmeme are now showing sponsored posts alongside the list of new stories - however, that's not quite the same as the Blog To Profit model - but it's worth noting. It could be a good way of getting traffic to your pimped out blog - as is BlogAds.

PayPerPost has been around since the summer - and has been doing well picking up a few million in venture capital. It looks like a great way of making money from posting links and adverts within a blog stream, but the poster is not allowed to reveal that's what they've done - which raises all sorts of ethical questions and issues.

Thursday saw the announcement of the launch of ReviewMe, which I believe will be the definitive service in this growing area. ReviewMe is being run by some big names in the link building and SEO arena. It's not up and running yet, but given the expertise of the people behind it, I'm certain it will be successful and one to go for. What's more, unlike the PayPerPost model, anyone submitting content are able to be both truthful and disclose the fact that's what they are doing.

I've often posted reviews on my blogs - it's something I love doing. Sticking an Amazon link on what you've reviewed is about as close to pimping as I've got in the past. Now with this new wave, it actually looks like I could earn a few quid doing stuff. It will be interesting to see if there's actual free review material going to be made available also.

I'm guessing bloggers will be increasingly getting into these new services. The trick will be keeping these paid posts in the spirit of their blogstreams. Stay tuned, next week we'll be looking at the latest Disney movie and CD by Eminem, and telling you why we think they will be 'The Next Big Web Thing'...

Thursday, October 05, 2006

10 Million Dollar Homepage Knock-Offs

Internet marketer Shoemoney recently mentioned a new slant on the PixelAdvertising model called Link Experiment. People bid on 100 link slots, and the highest bids move to the top. It got me thinking about a lot of the ones I'd seen in the past year, and I mentioned there it was high time someone did a list of some of the also rans in PixelAdvertising land.

Before I start, let's take a few moments to look at this style of advertising, and why it caught the imagination of lots of journalists. Simply put, the webmaster Alex Tew came up with a unique idea and made a fortune off it. With the Million Dollar Homepage he sold pixels, for a dollar a pop and made a mint.

The Million Dollar Homepage The press loved it, and webmasters like us slapping our head for not thinking such a simple things first. It was simple, unique and most of all, fun. It wasn't long before a 1000 webmasters with dollars in their eyes copied the model, none of them realising the boat had already sailed. As is want to happen on the web, it wasn't long before scripts, topsites and PixelAdvertising slots were being advertised and spammed everywhere.

Nothing quite said Million Dollar Knock-off like a quickly thrown up PixalAdvertising site. Usually characterized by a near blank page with one or two adverts, usually the owners default ads or those of his friends. PixelAdvertising seems to be a fad that's now passed in its original form. The LinkExperiment may play on the same ideas of as the PixelAdvertising, but it's moved on to some new conceptual ideas and a slicker and cleaner webpage.

There were some nice quirky variations on the original idea that really impressed me, as well as other quirky advertising schemes that were obviously inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage, but went on a completely different tangent. It's this area that will no doubt continue to be a place where new knock off idea are born, and that's a good thing.

So, here's my list of 10 Million Dollar Homepage Knock Offs, I've seen, been spammed with and even covered here in the past. They're arranged in order of my favourites with an actual winning slot for the best knock off, in my humble opinion.

TNBWT's Top Ten PixelAdvertising Rip-Offs

10: Billion Dollar Homepages - No site here, just a SERP. Obviously there was a land rush of greedy webmasters planning on going one big number bigger than the Million Dollar Homepage. Shame the horse had already bolted the stable - which would explain why so many money dreams are now parked pages.

09: Pixel Blogs Of The World - This one actually looks like a lot of work has gone into it. A PixelAdvertising page for various nations of the world - sub divided into political groups and occupations and more. That must have taken a lot of time to think up and implement. It's a shame the owner didn't spend some of that time looking into the collapsing market for PixelAdverts, it's bare.

08: Million Link Project - Hat's off for dressing it up like a directory, and the Web 2.0 stylings, but at heart it's Million Dollar Homepage knock-off. At 0.000111% complete, that's only another 999,889 links to go.

07: PixelWords - Proudly announcing it's more than just a PixelAdvertising site, this one makes a game of the now widely ignored advertising flash-in-the-pan. Either way, it's time someone turned to the answers page and filled in all the blanks.

06: 500 Spots - Another non-PixelAdvertising site with the PixelAdvertsing spirit, we have a million dollar tag cloud instead. A good idea shouldn't be limited, it should be moved to new arenas with impunity - and thus we have a through and through Web 2.0 PixelAdvertising implementation.

05: Million Dollar Jerks - A humorous attempt at a sarcastic Million Dollar Homepage, knocking the sort of standard adverts and advertisers these quirky hits get. But if I was an advertiser, I'm not sure I'd be too happy about having my site dissed in the hover over. At least this one know's it's fighting a losing battle, so props for that.

04: The Mile Wall - It's like PixelAdvertising, only turned on its side and called a wall. The great one about this, is I can travel a mile in literally a second, grab that bar and watch those adverts fly by.

03: Stuff And Me - Ok, so it's not strictly a PixelAdvertising site, but come on - webmaster thinks up quirky way of selling advertising on his site and goes for it. You got to take your hat off - it's a nicer way of getting your message out there than those ugly, gif heavy Pixel sites. And from the same guy and in the same spirit, let's not forget Make Me Watch TV.

02: Fill My Room - this one really appealed to me at the time, so much so that I actually forked out $50 for a spot on it. It turned the PixelAdvertising model away from websites and into the real world. You bought lego blocks for their room, to get an advert on the landing page - they were going to try and fill it up - but not long after the domain was down and it's now parked. There was a variant of this where you bought Beer cans, but I can't find that now. Still, this one appealed to my child like spirit and I so wanted them to succeed on it.

01: Watching The Web Fly By - Speaking of adverts flying by, this one just made me giggle a lot and is charming in an old school sort of flashing gif way. To my limited knowledge it was one of the first fully animated knock-offs I saw. I love that site - it makes me smile every time I open it up.

There you have it. So what'll be the next big advertising bandwagon - answers on a postcard please.

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