Electrosmart Blog For Digital Publishers And Internet Marketers

I have just been listening to a few podcasts of interviews carried out by Get Slightly Famous Author Steven Van Yoder. These are well worth listening to – they cover:

• Book Marketing – interviews Steven has done with various high profile organisations, including BNet This offers some great tips on marketing your book online.
• Networking with Dr. Ivan Misner, founder & chairman of BNI - listen for his VCP formula for converting contacts into profit streams
• New Media – with Rick Calvert of BlogWorldExpo.com comparing the traditional media withnew media and predictions of where he things the two streams will be in 5 years time

This is not high level theory. These accounts are from are real people, telling about new ways promote themselves and their media to multiple channels.

Listen Get Slightly Famous Audios

In a recent survey of key UK book publishers, conducted by The Bookseller, the recommended retail prices on e-books will likely be the same as their physical equivalent. The most commonly cited reason being was to avoid heavy discounting of e-books.

In the lead into the launch of the Sony Reader in September 2008, UK pubishers are setting their e-book prices , with only Hachette likely to price their digital titles below the price of the printed book, at present this is likely to be no more than 10% off the physical price.

Hachette has released plans for 750 titles to be made available from August 2008, with the aim to increase this to 1,000 e-books by the end of the year.

Also showing some support for selling e-books at parity prices are HarperCollins, Genevieve Shore, Random House and Simon & Schuste.

A key apsect of Ebooks in the UK is that they are not subject to the 17.5% VAT , making them immediately a cheaper alternative.

But there is very much a wait and see attitude to how long term pricing for ebooks will play out in the UK, so at the moment booksellers are being guided by the prices publishers set.

You have completed your niche research, you have your keyword optimized pages – now what?

Become an authority on the subject.

The choice you now need to make is to either join the trash site brigade who have been earning good incomes with thousands of trashy adsense sites or do you develop a business. Low level sites are gradually, but surely getting tossed off the Net. Search engine savvy is working its magic and building a great basis for quality sites to shine through in the long term. You may not have the instant cash, but you will have the long term consistent income.

So the choice is yours – be brave, and become an online authority. Once you have gained a core knowledge in your subject, you can very quickly become a center of authority. Don’t be shy about speaking loudly on your opinions. Sometimes you have to be a little bit provocative to get noticed – entice debate. Google loves comments on blogs, so get to it!

Find other people who are an authority on the subject. Not only will you learn more, but you can challenge some of their thinking, respectfully. Remember the aim is to become an authority, not a heckler. The Internet is a great place for raw debate. So just be yourself, be authentic, be professional and share your opinions. You will also learn about the opinions of others visiting that site. If they like the way you think, they will seek you out on your own site. Try to relate to what these other visitors are looking for and deliver to their needs.

Think of your interaction on the Internet just as you do with everyday business offline. It’s all about relating to the market and building relationships. And if you are not comfortable doing it by sending out emails every second day boring people with what you did every hour, build them through genuine interest in mutual areas of interest.

Happy Hunting!

The current search engines used by Google, Yahoo, MSN etc are text-based search engine. They rely on searchers visually checking every link to check to see if the result is what they are really looking for.

SearchMe.com has recently launched a beta version of its exciting new visual search. Simply download a plugin for Internet explorer to search web pages, images and videos. Using this search option, enter your keywords as normal and then select the sub search from: business books, search engines, business news, advertising and marketing, software and all.

Now this is where the big difference comes in – the results, rather than being listed in text format are in visual representations of the media, presented in a Windows Vista style format. This lets you instantly check the quality of the site without wasting time clicking through text links.

In addition, it highlights the search terms on the pages of the visualisations to give you an indication of the relevancy of the page to your search query.

This is really cool stuff, so check it out yourself – there is a lot more to this visual search than I have told you here.

There is a lot of chatter this month on blogs about Google releasing search data in it free Keyword Tool - in addition to the traditional green bar graph. It gives actual volume data on searches for the previous month as well as average monthly searches. This is a welcome replacement for Yahoo’s Inventory Overture.com keyword tool - which was pretty unreliable. But beware - the current reliability of this Google version is not much better at present. But I will hold out hope for good things to come. So I still think its workth taking a quick look at a few of its features

Have a look here

Rather than being totally inaccurate in its numbers, it may be more in the use of the tool - how you interpret what you see.

For example the search volumes for the default setting “Broad” search, does not give you the results you want for basic keyword research for website planning or content writing. However by using the drop-down box you can use to refine your search and get average monthly searches for either:

• Broad
• Phrase
• Exact
• Exact [by Location]

The Broad and Phrase options can also include variations of your phrase. Help with these additional features can be gained by clicking on the question marks inside the tool and follow the links for detailed explanations.

One annoying thing I find with many Google tools today is that regardless of the zone I set as my default, it defaults to my home country. Since my business is set up in the US, but I may be logging in from London, Melbourne, Auckland or any other country, it defaults results to the country of IP origin.

However, it is very useful to be able to refine results based on a particular country or “All Countries and Territories”. Further - and this a great feature - if you access the Keyword Tool from within one of your AdWords ad group, the search traffic statistics will factor in your campaign’s country and language targeting.

Now this is where the current bugs come in. With some searches zoned to Australia, the results were the same as the results for International. Not very likely! I have redone this search several times over the past few days, and still get the same issue.

Google’s Keyword Tool

How to use the Google Keyword Tool

More About Keyword Tool’s Search Volume Statistics

I was just reading an email from David Pogue on the “E-Publishing Debate” after he suffered at the hands of pirates who requested [under the guise of being blind] a pdf electronic copy of his printed book - then blasted it free over the Web.

The feedback David received was quite interesting, with many readers believing that making his book free was almost his duty as a celebrated author and that offering free ebook versions would somehow mystically increase the sales for his printed version.

My own research revealed as many disasters using this tactic, as there were claims of successes.

However, it does raise a good question - one I am currently struggling with in relation to my own upcoming book launch. Should publishers offer both printed and electronic versions - and if so, what e-format should be used?

You can find detail of the various electronic publishing formats on the Electrosmart site. These range from uncontrolled pdf versions which offer the greatest convenience to readers, to locked and protected versions requiring login to a website to unlock the document with a user password each time they wish to read it - not that convenient!!

I have to admit that my own feelings are somewhat fragmented. I want to offer the best possible reading experience for my customers - meaning a simple PDF would be the best, however, with the rampant efraud from emerging markets currently ruining many revenue streams of producers of many fine products [not just media] I am naturally somewhat hesitant.

At the other extreme - using a platform such as Amazon Kindle requires a not inconsiderable investment in a proprietary ebook reader before the book can even be accessed.

In the mid-ground, one reader suggested that putting in big letters at the beginning of the PDF document: ‘IF YOU DID NOT PAY FOR THIS PDF, YOU ARE DEPRIVING THE AUTHOR OF HIS LEGITIMATE INCOME.’ would somehow tear at the heartstrings of many who would otherwise take advantage of a non-purchased copy. Whilst this will not affect a true pirate - it was thought that inducing a pang of guilt in the ordinary person may be a sufficient deterrent.

The final conclusion was that there was no valid conclusion. It is diffiicult to know whether a free ebook version will hinder or help sales of the printed version. I guess its still up to each of us to make our own decision on this and pray we don’t come to the attention of these commercial cowards.

I have noticed a sudden unseasonal drop in my Adsense earnings this month so decided to investigate. In case you have not realised, Adsense reporting has changed to include some new features. Read the Adsense Blog here.

Unfortunately that did little for my understanding as to why my eCPM has been slowly declining over the past year. Whilst some of this is attributed to new sites yet to perform as well as more mature sites, dragging down my overall CPC revenue, I also noted that there was a marked decline in revenue once ‘placement targeted’ ads started appearing on my sites.

Contextually placed ads are all performing well, but none of the sites are doing well with placement ads - is this because the advertiser is not selecting wisely. If my contextual ads are performing above what I believe is industry average, then there is no reason a well targeted placement ad should not do the same.

This go me thinking - are these advertisers pulling my overall Adsense revenue down - if so, how can I stop placement ads without having to go to the trouble of identifying each of the advertisers and blocking them.

So I went searching to see if this was an option - as yet I have not found anywhere where I as a publiser can control the choice between placement and contextual ads. If there is some option hidden deep, I would appreciate your advice in a comment.

Esmart

I just came across a very interesting analysis tool for internet marketers that analyses a webpage URL or a search term to give you the ‘Commercial Intent’ of a visitor to that page, or searcher of that term.

Using the URL search - the tool identifies whether this page is perceived by the search engine as a ‘Commercia’ page or a ‘Non-Commercial’ page; then assigns a probability that a transaction will result off that page. And, it claims that its predictions are 90 percent accurate.

Keyword search - provides the same analysis on keywords entered into a search engine, based on the selection of words used and the likelihood that the searcher is actually intending to buy, or just looking for general information.

The power behind this tool is putting these two factors together. If you can identify the OCI for your keywords, then optimize your page for both search terms AND commercial intent, surely you should end up with more chance of converting a page visitor to a customer. And think of the savings in PPC Campaigns!!

Give it a try - you will be fascinated with the results!

MSN OCI Analysis Tool

One of the first things one learns as an internet publisher is the importance of building inbound links. However, do the job too well and it seems you can endanger your rankings rather than promote them.

I was just reading a very interesting SEO article about how excessive patterns, repetition and footprints can kill your site!

Apart from the obvious automatic page footprints, the engines are also able to detect patterns around the inbound links you have to your site.

Where these inbound links are from multiple directories using the same site description, or from articles using the same resource box link text, the search engines detect is as an ‘non-normal’ pattern. This becomes more apparent as you increase the links into your site.

The end result is, your page ranking dives rather than increases. Read the full article

Yahoo is moving closer to handing off its Web search advertising to Google having just complete a successful test.

Although Google and Yahoo are keeping tight lipped on a possible partnership, one can expect Yahoo to join a three-way deal where Yahoo would merge with Time Warner AOL in return for Time Warner taking a stake in Yahoo.

Outsourcing Web search advertising to Google will allow Yahoo to focus on its online brand advertising.

Of course, any potential deal will need to fend off antitrust challenges, which may include limiting the ties to specific groups of search queries or regions.

Yahoo is considering alternatives following Microsoft’s unsolicited $US31 per share takeover offer, an offer that Yahoo felt undervalued Yahoo. However, discussions with Google will not necessarily prevent progress towards an eventual merger with Microsoft.