Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category
skyhawk133
In a drastic move aimed at pleasing big budget advertisers, TribalFusion will begin offering advertisers the choice to block publishers with forums. TribalFusion is one of the largest advertising networks on the web. In an email from the company, account executives are requesting forum owners tag ads in their forums separately from non-forum content. Sites with forums have been identified and will be blocked entirely by larger advertisers beginning August 15, 2007. Only ads with the special tag will still run on forum sites blocked by advertisers.
Is this the end of CPM advertising on user-generated content sites? Will this include web 2.0 sites with user submitted content and comments? TribalFusion cites the unmoderated nature of forums as the reason, however, I highly doubt that’s the case. From an advertisers perspective, forums have notoriously low CTRs. Why not just come out and ask publishers to frequency cap forums. Or to pull sites out of the network with questionable or possibly questionable content.
I think this will have long reaching effects for TribalFusion. They built their reputation on accepting high quality sites, many of which have large forums, and having above average pay outs. Personally, my payouts have slowly declined over the past several months and with this latest change I think it’s time for another company to step up and take the reigns for forum owners. Forums may not be the best place to advertise, but with the right targetting and frequency capping they can provide an excellent ROI for advertisers, especially for branding campaigns.
In the mean time, if I may offer some suggestions for those publishers effected by this change. Now is the best time to step up your in house advertising efforts. Start going after those companies in your niche and show them the value of advertising on a forum. Work out deals with your second tier providers and let them know you’ll be sending more traffic their way. It may be time to sign an exclusive deal with a second tier provider to get a better CPM. And if this is going to completely kill your income, it’s time to start diversifying. You should have done this a long time ago, now you have no choice.
Posted in Forum Building, Web 2.0, Industry News, Monetization | 4 Comments »
Frito Pie
I’m intrigued by the notion of online personas and the manner in which people can mask themselves well via forum discussions or email for the sake of hiding who they truly are. I’ve been frustrated by the auto-mail I have received from Google when I’ve tried to ask a question. I’ve wondered at the type of people behind the usernames in forum discussions and if they are who they claim to be really. At Affiliate Summit East I discovered that many are who they really claim to be. In the flesh. For good or bad. With a few exceptions.
I arrived in time to check in, register, enjoy a continental breakfast before a keynote address by the master of online entertainment. Entertaining and witty, the audience browsed through Ze Frank’s brain like Firefox on speed. Exceleration. Web 2.0. Interaction and visitors creating content. A blast for my creativity. He was who I expected him to be.
After the keynote address I began walking through the exhibitor booths where I collected t-shirts, pens, bags, money and a yo-yo. The Google gang was helpful with my Adsense and Adwords accounts. I expected them to be too busy to answer specific questions but they were not. One Googler had me log in to help me with Adsense. When I exhausted my concerns with that account, the Adwords gal took over. Helping me through the tools with plenty of answers to my questions, I walked away with a yo-yo and a great satisfaction at the helpfulness of their attitude. They were better than I expected them to be.
I found Linkshare who took my name and card and promised to explore why the four merchants I applied as an affiliate turned my website down as it made little sense to me. Again, better than I expected in person.
I walked into the HackerSafe booth with some questions and walked out with great information which should help me with security issues and concerns of my customers.
At this point, I was impressed with what I was experiencing. Better face to face communication with people I had only met through email or online forums that left me satisfied with the quality of character. Online and Offline matched or exceeded my expectations for the better.
It was then that I passed a booth with a name I recognized from some online forums for webmasters. This was a guy who had been banned from a few sites I was a member. His latest blog and forum ownership claim to be a place for discussions about online marketing and one, which when I visited in curiosity, was less than professional in content. “U no watt i meen?” In fact the thread titles contained profanity, content applauding the “black hat” area of earning with *coughspamcough* and much about the “adult” online industry. And here he was in the middle of Affiliate Summit exhibitors as though he was offering something wonderful to someone like me.
I was intrigued. I stood off to the side and watched his booth for a while out of curiousity. At some point an online marketer walked by who I know as a successful and moral online earner. He was called back to this booth. He turned, shook the hand of the booth owner to demonstrate respect, was offered a t-shirt which he laid over his chest as if wearing it while one of the booth’s helpers snapped a photo from a cell phone. Further curiosity revealed much more of a lack of character and a display of deceit that made my skin crawl. Back at my hotel I visited this guy’s forum to find the photo displayed for the humor and entertainment of his forum members.
I was disgusted as I thought of the childish, morbid behavior that I witnessed in person and on the online forums where he was banned. And now on his forums. And yes, he is exactly as I expected him to be. I had hoped for better and received far less.
“Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is; the tree is the real thing.” - Abraham Lincoln
We may work hard to mask who we really are for the sake of our online business. But given enough time and enough interaction online and off, true character will demonstrate who we really are. Not the shadow of the reputation but the real thing.
Posted in Web 2.0, Affiliate Marketing, Monetization | 4 Comments »
Charl Norman
Super Affiliate Vinny Lingham has launched his much anticipated Synthasite project into closed beta. Truly one of the first world class web 2.0 apps to come out of South Africa getting reviewed on the holy grail of web 2.0 news, Mashable.
The goal of SynthaSite is to bring the offline functionality of a WYSIWYG web site editor like Frontpage or Dreamweaver to the browser in a rich Internet application. Synthasite enables you and your team to collaboratively work on your website design using the tools available within its service, which easily arrange text, images, badges and buttons to create a professional-looking site. There are a few items available by default, such as a YouTube video or a Flickr photo search, which can be dragged and dropped into your design. The functionality is very easy to maneuver, enabling novice users to create feature rich websites and easily choose between a selection of professionally designed templates!
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »
Charl Norman
MyBlogLog, the “Whos been reading my blog” widget provider, was acquired by Yahoo late last year. As with many startups acquired by big corporations it seemed MyBlogLog was set for the ‘dead pool’ with many months passing without any upgrades from their new owner. Although finally, Yahoo has stepped up and announced a sweep of upgrades and changes for the blog community.
The new features include a filter for offensive photos and the ability to sign off so you don’t show up on blogs you don’t want to. The improvements are an obvious since MyBlogLog was suffering from serious spamming. After it’s initial buzz, MyBlogLog’s growth failed to catch on because of spam and scaling issues. What this new announcement means is that an effort by Yahoo to escape the same fate that Google suffered in its acquisition of the Dodgeball.
Posted in Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Charl Norman
With the recent release of the new Digg API, developers all over the web have started playing with it, creating nifty new apps around Digg’s gigantic database or integrating it with their own applications. The DIGG API gives access to a whole range of data from the DIGG database for example - if a story has been dugg or not. One developer decided to use this data neatly formatted into a nifty Firefox extention which sits in the bottom right of your browser.
If the site you are viewing has been submitted to Digg, the button will display the number of Diggs it has, and clicking the button will bring you to the site’s Digg page.
If the story has not been submitted, the button will read “Digg This” and will link you a Digg submit page for the article.
Install extension over at NeoThoughts. Downloaded, Installed, and Digging it. (;
Another post you might want to check out is Mashable’s 7 awesome things built on the Digg API.
Posted in Web 2.0 | No Comments »
Charl Norman
Most old school webmasters will be familiar with a service called Sitemeter. I remember using the the hit counter on a few of my sites but always found the interface very 1990s and the stats hard to navigate. With services such as Google Analytics reporting top class stats on your web property, Sitemeter seemed to be left for dead dispite the fact that top blogs such as Mashable and ProBlogger still use the service.
However, Sitemeter announced today that their scheduled for a relaunch of their service which also happends to fall on the same day as the Google Analytics makeover.
Some improvements are easier to navigate stats and a better look and feel. At the time of writing this, I couldn’t find additional features on Sitemeter’s free account, although you can see a ‘preview’ of the new index look below .
This is my first blog post, I will be researching and blogging web 2.0 related topics for EarnerForums. You can find my blog here.
Posted in Web 2.0 | No Comments »
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