Marketing Pilgrim

What’s a great way for a search engine that struggles to be mentioned with the top search providers in the marketplace to get some traffic? Do something for someone else. That’s exactly what Ask.com is doing with its ‘Search or the Cure’ campaign which is designed to raise one million dollars to Susan G. Komen for the Cure group who raises money for breast cancer research.

From the pure humanity side this is a pretty cool idea. It allows people to simply take an action to contribute rather than asking them for money. Of course, there are opportunities to donate but it’s a fundraising organization after all and the cause is something that everyone can get behind. In this case, asking for a donation seems very appropriate.

Psst! Want some real time search in ya Google?

I’ve picked up a batch from the same people that make Açaí “detox-weight-loss-live-forever” supplements, so you know it’s the real deal!

You in?

OK, all you have to do is make a slight change to the output URL for any Google search. It’s easy.

Conduct a search for anything and change the filter to show results for just the past 24 hours. Like so:

http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:d

See that qdr:d at the end? That tells Google to show results from the past day. Go ahead and change that to qdr:n and you’ll get results from the past minute!

http://www.google.com/search?q=iphone&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:n

Cool huh? And if you change the “n” to an “s” you’ll get results from the past second–but you can’t handle that much real-time goodness.

Never fear, you won’t find me adopting this the next time I give a talk about my book.

(via)

Not long ago we reported that Hulu is now attracting more viewers than Time Warner Cable. However, despite that, the cable networks that own Hulu are still making the majority of their ad profits from traditional media.

Hulu is not the only one suffering from failed ad programs while their user base rises. Facebook now has a user base larger than most first world countries. Despite this they have failed to turn a profit even after releasing a sophisticated ad platform.

Even as users are flocking to online media, traditional media companies are still making the majority of the ad profits. Lets take a look at how traditional media is making loads more than online publishers.

How to Be a Traditional (Rich) Media Fat Cat.

1. Develop addictive content, that preys on people’s emotions.

By Trisha Lyn Fawver

If ever a cause was near & dear to me, this is definitely one of them. As an affiliate manager, affiliate marketing is my livelihood.  Over the last year, several states have introduced legislation defining affiliates as tax nexus for businesses.  This means that if a merchant has affiliates in a state with this kind of law, they are required to charge sales tax for all online orders made to customers in that state. 

This started in May 2008 with New York, and quickly spread to California, Minnesota, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Hawaii, and other states.  Affiliate marketing advocates were successful in stopping the laws from passing in most states, however Rhode Island and North Carolina have passed similar laws to New York. 

You hear the stories all the time. The human resources manager decides to do a little ORR (online reputation research) on a job candidate. They hear that they is a great candidate for a job opening. They are the best interview by far and the scuttlebutt in the office is that they are the person for the job. The HR folks then do some basic Google searches and they uncover some other data about the “candidate”. What’s this Flickr page with pictures of the candidate passed out in the bushes after a night of “entertaining”? What about some tweets that the candidate fired off to sound cool but forgot that they were creating their own online resume? Then the candidate doesn’t understand why they didn’t get the job. The candidate now has to go back to the drawing board.