Email Updates

Yep, I said bumrush… it's an old term that was used lots when I was a kid. Basically it means mad frenzy which is what happened at 12 midnight today.

Facebook opened the floodgates to they Vanity URL update this evening, what that means is that they are dropping the unfriendly numbers and symbols they used to have.

Apparently there were half a million Facebook vanity URLs snatched up in the first 15 minutes after midnight! Wow, thats a mad rush, hence the word bumrush.

I must admit I didn't research any of this or it's implications and perhaps, just perhaps… I made a mistake. Hate to admit it but I went for a common term that I like to use for getting leads… oh oh, I'm revealing too much

I grabbed affordableseo as my URL, so not you can look me up on Facebook as Facebook.com/affordableseo

Funny part about this is that I'm moving away from the SEO consulting I've been doing and getting into some new ventures. I decided I was tired of trading time for money, especially now that I'm on a big project with a huge fortune 500. All the SEO, PPC and related work I have ever done has been trading time for money.

I thought eventually I would have a VA (virtual assistant) that I would train and teach how to do some of the voodoo I do but that never happened. I basically have just been consulting for the past 5 years and it's time to step into new and greener pastures, especially now that the economy will be going through some major flux for the next few years in an effort to correct all the bad loans and overspending that has happened everywhere.

So anyways, thats another subject, just wanted to say it has been an interesting evening on Facebook with some surprising numbers… comes to show you how important folks hold their Facebook profile to a phrase or name.

I am a huge fan of Amazon's S3 services and recently decided I wanted to mask my S3 share with a sub domain. I did some searching around and found a great post on how to easily get this done.

I'm not going to take that content and repost it here, that wouldn't be fair. But if your looking for a great explaination of how to use your own subdomain to point to your S3 buckets, the go take a look at this set of instructions here…

Tracking anything done online is part of a successful approach to marketing. That said, I have been playing with affiliate marketing as well as CPA and discovered a nice tool to rework you URLS with some id tracking.

Google has a PPC URL Builder that can integrate with Google Analytics. What I like about it is that it's platform independent so your free to use other forms of traffic generation albeit Yahoo or MSN's PPC programs or banner, email etc. By being able to assign different tracking code to the same link it's easy to identify where traffic is coming from.

This is especially valuable if I want to track how my links on my blog are doing, I still have to initiate link cloaking but to add id specific data to it will help further identify where that winning conversion comes from.

The tool is free and if you don't have a plan to track, you can now start on using Googles free tool for URL Building as they call it.

Happy clicking

Just learned about this Google Wave thingy that is being previewed by Google right now at http://wave.google.com/

Seems to me that it's like a portable API that can update like a Facebook conversation on any object. And it has the ability to add folks to the threaded conversation! I love the idea and if it can integrate into existing Web.20 properties such as Twitter or Facebook, it may be a delightful way to centralize all convo's as they happen.

I especially like that communications look like their are in real time chat, that's awesome as well.

So… take a peek at the Google Wave while it's in preview mode because I suspect there will be lots of buzz about it in the coming months.

I was just reminded how quickly time flies, I bumped into this Date With Destiny video of the event that happened at the end of last year. Amazing how time is flying by, my boy is now 8, learning about American history and growing up really quickly.

Anyways, here is a quick video of DWD and it gives you a snapshot idea of what it's about. It's a quick flash into what happens, or some of what happens over at DWD and why I love it. I always tell people, it's basically an opportunity to watch humanity unfold in front of you to help you realize how much we are all the same. How we all have to same basic wants, fears, desires and outcomes in life. It's also an chance to rewrite the past and create a strategy of how to succeed no matter what. Sounds simple? Check it out here…

Here's a little nugget for any of you who don't have software that produces an XML Sitemap…. also in addition if your not sure what your keyword density is for your pages… I have another resource to share.

http://xmlsitemap.com/ will produce a clean simple sitemap, this is going to help the spiders index your site properly.

http://www.keyworddensity.com/ will allow you to quickly see what your density consists of. Rule of thumb is to stick within the 2-3% for your target keyword, any more than that and you risk being seen as spammy.

SO that's it, just wanted to share these quick resources, they were required for a client of mine and I decided to put this out there for those that don't have the software to do this type of work. Catch ya later

Marketing to moms and the baby niche is an evergreen niche that deserve attention regardless of CPA, Affiliate or direct sale plays. Interesting enough the biggest things moms do on the web is check their email. Paying bills comes in second which I'm sure banks must be happy to hear. That said bank may want to rethink their design to make it more attractive to women.

Also hot with moms is reading news and staying on top of the weather, I know we check the weather the night before we send our boy to school just to make sure he is dressed appropriately.

Research for purchases, and price comparison… I found this one surprising since this means targeted review sites for women can be a great affiliate play, especially if your going to update them with deal alerts and reviews via email. Just a thought

Your probably wondering where the heck did I get this data from, it's not mine, it came from the Marketing to Moms Coalition. You can learn more about it here.