We Do Search Engine Optimization.

Where do visitors to your site come from?

67 percent of search engine users are driven to search by an offline channel (direct mail, print advertising, radio, TV, etc.).

This means that over half of the people that search for information about your products or services were triggered by offline information. Powerful statement for old media.

Search marketers may be ignoring the offline channels that drive users to search engines. 45 percent of search engine marketers do not integrate search marketing efforts with offline channels. Marketers attribute the lack of integration to various factors, including lack of budget and separate people managing search marketing and offline channels. Don’t be part of this major disconnect, improve offline and print marketing to reinforce your online business presence.

The SEO team should be integrated with your print marketing team.

57% of users claim search engines have become more important to their use of the internet over the past year.

72% of the younger age group of 18–24 year olds reported a growth of importance in performing queries on search engines to find information and make purchasing decisions.

This study was researched by iProspect.

I recently switched to an iPhone, and am sad. I’m sad i didn’t get one sooner, but also a bit sad at innocence lost. Every giant leap in technology is a little like loosing a piece of innocence and the iPhone has simply changed how much I can be connected and in touch with family, friends and business.

Once you get a quality internet enabled cellphone, you can’t go back. This is a win for ATT and other wireless carriers.

One problem with the iPhone is battery life. The phone sucks batteries like the IRS sucks on your bank account. It goes down fast.

The general solution is to turn off as many services as possible. If you ask why you should disable so many cool features, the answer is this is just a part of the process. Smartphones are still early stage products, and batteries just aren’t small enough yet.

Holding the iPhone home button for 7 seconds will tell an application to Force Quit which can dramatically save battery life by stopping programs such as Mail and Safari from running in the background. Pressing the home button will kill some apps, but some remain active in the background, unknowingly killing your battery life.

Preserve iPhone Battery Life

• Disable WiFi
• Disable 3G – will help also reduce dropped calls
• Disable data push
• Disable location services (i have a hard time with this one)
• Fetch new data no more than once an hour

Also, for some reason Apple products have historically low battery life, my power macs and macbooks get lousy uptime when not plugged in. I got a lot of the The Art of iPhone Battery Life from Guy kawasaki. I don’t have 9000 contacts like he does, but I manage contacts through the Gmail contacts and Apple Mail address book.

To take your own cool screenshots on the iPhone hold down the power and home button simultaneously.

I have been promoting the Microsoft adCenter affiliate program since its inception, and made some great commissions off of it. After $900 in earnings promoting the Microsoft adcenter PPC program, the affiliate managers began changing service options, restricting usage, playing coy with their loyal affiliates, cancelling the program twice, and finally terminating all payouts in October 2008.

I received a final email from microsoftaffiliates.net announcing the end of all payouts. However it leaves open the possibility of a new adcenter affiliate program in the near future.

Lets hope Microsoft returns to its senses and creates an incentive program for their contextual advertising property. Maybe MSN will launch it on microsoftaffiliates.com – what a novelty to use a .com

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MSAN News
September 11, 2008 v1.11

Windows Live OneCare To Be Set at $2.00 Payout
As previously announced, the payout for every US or CA based free trial of Windows Live OneCare will be lowered to $2.00 as of September 15, 2008 in order to extend the lifetime of the campaign. However, there will be additional promotions to come that will give you the opportunity to earn more, so stay tuned!

Window Live Toolbar Extends $2.50 Payout!
We are pleased to announce that the WIndows Live Toolbar $2.50 payout will extend through September for every unique, US-based installation. Be sure to log into the Affiliate Account Center to access all new banner ads and text links that will drive your customers to the enhanced landing page!

Update your promotions now to increase your conversions and take advantage of the limited-time payout opportunity of $2.50 through the end of September. After September, the payout will be set at $1.50.

adCenter Partner Program To Wrap Up In October
As you know, the adCenter Partner program stopped taking new sign ups on June 30, 2008, but has continued to pay on any of those sign ups that met the minimum spend requirement. October payouts will include the last earnings from the Partner program and then that program will be officially closed. Be on the lookout in October for your final payment. Thanks again for your participation in this initiative and we will be in touch as soon as we hear any details about a new version of the program.

Let Us Know Your Thoughts
We would love to hear your thoughts on our current programs, Windows Live OneCare and Windows Live Toolbar. What is working? What is not working? What would be helpful for you to be succesful? This input from you is vital for us to continue to optimize these programs to ensure they are where you need them to be. Please send your comments, questions and feedback to affiliates@microsoftaffiliates.net.

General Updates

* Commission: August commissions will be delayed this month. We are working to process and send out checks as quickly as possible. We will have an update for you next week.

Melissa Wit
Affiliate Manager
Microsoft Affiliate Network

_________________________
Voice: 727.324.0185
Fax: 313.447.2398
affiliates@microsoftaffiliates.net

Here are the alleged tax proposals
under a Barack Obama and McCain presidency. These figures were taken from the Americans for Tax Reform website and are not guaranteed to be accurate.

I do not vote on a candidate based solely on the amount they wish to change taxes, and there are many factors to look at besides money. A good business will thrive in any environment and entrepreneurs will always get new products and services to the marketplace.

It is important to have facts on a candidate before voting, and politicians tend to generalize their positions during elections.

A breakdown of tax changes by presidential candidate

Explanations and sources of tax rates for the 2 presidential candidated

1. Inheritance tax
2. CNBC Closing Bell. March 27, 2008
3. The first $5 million ($10 million for a surviving spouse) of an estate would be death tax-exempt (Source: johnmccain.com)
4. The first $3.5 million ($7 million for a surviving spouse) of an estate would be death tax-exempt (Source: barackobama.com)
5. The “alternative minimum tax” (AMT) requires taxpayers to calculate their taxes two ways, and pay whichever method results in a higher tax owed
6. Self-employed taxpayers pay both ordinary income tax and self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare). According to the NFIB, most small business employers make at least $250,000 per year (Source: nfib.org)
7. Barack Obama has said he would raise taxes on married couples making $250,000 and individuals making $200,000 per year (Source: barackobama.com)
8. The U.S. corporate income tax is currently the second-highest in the developed world. The average European corporate income tax rate is about 25%
9. It takes larger businesses several years to deduct machinery and equipment, even though they purchase the business asset in year one (e.g. a computer must be slowly-deducted over six calendar years)
10. Above and beyond the current 35% corporate income tax rate on energy companies

Source: Americans for Tax Reform www.atr.org

Focus on what you do best. MySpace receives 95 Percent of Ad Revenues from only 9 Countries. The top countries clicking on social networking ads were not named but we have a good idea of which ones bring the most users susceptible to advertising .

The countries are likely:

1. United States
2. UK
3. Japan
4. Germany
5. France
6. Canada
7. Australia
8. China
9. Russia

Reported by MySpace CEO DeWolfe.

Another indicator of business success: CEO pay. The CEO’s salary sets a cap for everyone else and it aligns his/her interest with the equity holders and employees. It creates an atmosphere of excitement for the company to innovate rather than just collecting paychecks.

According to Peter Thiel, the best predictor of startup success is low CEO Pay $100-125k per year.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple Computer in 1998 he was paid $1 annual salary for years as iCEO.

I was reading through my 50+ subscribed feeds in Google Reader and found a blog post about consumption and material items.

It reminds me of a lesson: money can buy some comfort, but material items don’t bring happiness. The more stuff you own, the more it tends to own you.

1. The things you own have a cost of ownership – the more physical items you have, the larger a house/apartment is required to store it
2. You are carrying around the emotional weight of the things you don’t use. That Atari 2600 game console from your childhood you never play but keep for sentimental reasons? Get rid of it and you will be happier.
3. You don’t learn your lessons on overspending, because you never face reality. It is possible to buy a full set of gardening tools with the best of intentions, and never use them
4. You let yourself buy status symbols—whether an exhaustive book collection. Books, artwork, posters and old magazine collections are nice but they may not increase your quality of life
5. You use objects as comfort. Its nice to have a pickup truck just in case you need to haul a new piece of furniture home from ikea, but how often do you need the utility of a truck?
6. You are weighed down. If you can’t carry it, you can’t travel with it.
7. The more stuff you have the more blind you become to it. If you have 40 drinking glasses, its easy to add more without realizing the bulk it creates.
8. If you are overspending, you will never see that money again. Selling items at a garage sale or on Ebay will only bring about 25% of its original purchase price.
9. Each object has a path before you bought it. A dish that was made in China, cost a lot in materials, shipping and display before you brought it home, using up a portion of the planet’s resources.
10. You like the idea of owning something more than the reality. Its nice to say you have a Ferrari, but this is not practical for anyone but a bachelor.

See the original post where I was inspired to write about the hidden cost of your stuff.

What do Microsoft and Seinfeld have in common? They both peaked in the late 1990’s.

Below is a video of the partnership of Microsoft, and Jerry Seinfeld, who was reportedly paid $10 million to do these ad spots.

There is something strange about Microsoft’s advertising agency, they really try hard to copy apple, but fail miserably. The ad agency is trying to portray Microsoft Vista as cool, edgy, interesting and innovative however the result is an unconnected ad that inspires no interest or desire to take action to purchase the product.

Shoe circus? This conjured visions of the Vista programmers being a team of clowns working at Microsoft. Not what they had in mind.

The ad will definitely go viral, and will get millions of online views, however the buzz will not increase Vista sales. It could possibly inspire people to check their local mall for cool technology, where they may potentially end up at an Apple Store.

Could these Vista video ads actually help sell Macs? One thing is certain, it will not increase Vista operating system sales.

Microsoft is good at making functional products and forcing corporations into endless upgrade cycles, but they have never made a really cool product.

I’m glad im not the only person confused by this advertising.

Microsoft SVP Bill Veghte sent an email to all employees where he talks about the goals of the campaign in one of the most impressive pieces of meaningless corporate PR ever created. The overall goal is to inspire consumers and “tell the story of how Windows enables a billion people around the globe to do more with their lives today.” This first phase, he says, “is designed to engage consumers and spark a new conversation about Windows – a conversation that will evolve as the campaign progresses, but will always be marked by humor and humanity.”

Thankfully no trees were harmed in sending this masterful piece of fluff.

It appears Google is going to be transitioning to the Google Suggest format as their new search default. This means that when a user performs a search in Google, Google will use a formula to decide what search phrases the user intends to search.

Obviously any major change to Google’s core search functionality will have a big impact on search engine marketers. Whether it will be a change for the good or bad is still widely up for debate. On the plus side for example, regional sites may see a boon from this as Google will be predicting results tailored to the user’s own region. On the flip side, while 3-4 word keyword phrases will likely see a huge increase in search volume, long tail keywords will not receive nearly as many searches, which negatively effect many sites that receive a great deal of long tail traffic.

New Search Functionality

Another interesting feature of the new Google suggest format will be the drop down mini SERP. This will essentially offer website the best possible search engine position as the mini SERP page will be free of any PPC ads, and top ranked sites on mini SERPs will surely garner a great deal of organic traffic.

Based on Google’s status in comparison to all other search engines, this is going to be a huge move. There’s no doubt this has the potential to completely change the future of search – for better or worse.

One pitfall is a reputation management nightmare.

For example, searching for “Obama” brings up suggest results including “Obama Antichrist” and “Obama Muslim”. These searches may have nothing to do with the person, and a searcher may have never known about potential references to “Muslim” but now they may click to find out. If you have positive results for potentially negative search queries this could be a big benefit.

Another potential problem is negative reviews, complaints or customer service issues. Terminix pest control has had complaints in the past, and they show in the search suggestions:

Users looking for Terminix.com find direct suggestions to complaints, which could potentially be an issue for the corporation.

Google suggest presents unique challenges to search engine optimization companies and I am very curious to see what new SEO tactics arise out of auto generated search suggestions.