The same day Tiger Woods ghost ride his whip into a fire hydrogen AND a pole just a few feet from his house, the news of that story caught fire on twitter trending topics and in 1 hours there was over 50,000 twit’s about the topic making it one of the top trending topics I have ever seen.
Twitter’s Trending topics has a lot of potential to grow as its a cool feature and with alittle imagination, it could be something special.
Another cool thing about twitter’s trending topic is its a great place to find and friend people with the same interest as you. For example, if you love watching “The Hills”, all you have to do is just do a search for “the hils” and start up a convo with people who are talking about The hils there.
Twitter will either sellout or simple be replaced in the coming year or so. Why, well for one thing they have no viable Business model to speak of and for another it would be a simple thing for one of the big 3 search engines or facebook to simply create there own bigger better twitter and sign up all there current subscribers to it.
Who would benefit from doing this the most? I would say BING.com. bing has made it clear that they want a big share of the search biz and creating there own twitter and releasing it on everything microsoft related would be a killer blow for twitter.
Facebook on the other hand would be a perfect fit for what they already have going ( the biggest social media website in the world).
Yahoo…..its to late for yahoo, they are toast in more ways then one plus they shipped off there search to bing.com.
GOOGLE…… if google ever makes there own twitter (which you can bet they are working on rightnow) it will be all over with. it would be like everytime you turn on your pc you will see google/twitter/adsense in one shape or form (Yuck).
In closing, my advice to twitter is to make a deal with bing.com and head for the hills….Beverly hills that is .
Hello everyone! I have decided to start a series of reviews on affiliate networks based upon my personal experiences. The reviews are more geared towards the prospective of Power Affiliates.
Very first in this series, I will review Affiliate.com
We used affiliate.com real good during the good ole time of ringtones advertising. Like all aggressive Affiliate company, they had aggressive affiliate manager, who will run every extra mile to help you out.
They offered weekly payments via wire to me in India (though later I think we went for ACH in US only). They were cool with all the methods as long as you tell them in advance. Obviously many techniques used during that time are now frowned upon and most of the power affiliates will swear that they have never used those promotional tricks – In reality everyone lives with time. However good thing with affiliate.com (then Cpaempire was they were cool dudes with laidback attitude).
Once we hit the daily cap of the campaign on a Sunday. Also the owner got worried as he thought our conversion rate was very high. So they paused the campaign on a Saturday night. Barry was able to talk to our manager and he in turn was able to talk to owner and get whole matter resolved in minutes. That is called efficiency.
Weekly payment worked like charm, never had to remind them.
At top level, most of the affiliate programs have same offers. Though Affiliate.com’s specialty was ZIP / EMAIL submit offers. Also once you start showing the volume, they were always willing to negotiate better rates for you.
At times we faced the situations where we felt that either Affiliate.com or the advertiser is scrubbing the leads. However our affiliate manager was always on our side and genuinely went after the advertiser that they are scrubbing the leads.
However once our affiliate manager left the job, our relationship got ended. Later in passive mode of income they got a few complaints on our promotional methods, there was not much that I can do. The new company terminated my account and never paid the pending money. To give them benefit of doubt, at that time I was making very little like 300-400 a month and I never really pursued with them.
Till date we maintain an account with them ad we keep on getting calls from them. Whenever we need something, we call them and they are more than willing to help (though in recent time we have yet to really use them effectively).
Overall a nice company to work with. Scott Ritcher is the man >)
These a days team at Google is busy in coming out with lot many different new products. At times it is making us, the advertisers very confused with terminology.
First they had Google Adowrds Local Extension. Where-in your address can be displayed in ads when someone is searching for you. It is just extension of Google Adwords.
Then they started Google Local Ads. Available on a fixed price per month. Currently they are testing it in beta phase at SF and San Diego only.
The difference in these two was, in adwords extension, you see just the address, whereas in Local Ads, you will see a blue balloon on ad as well as on the map.
Today, while searching for Plumber Montery, I started seeing blue balloons in adwords extension as well. First I thought that they started Local Ads all over the country, but later I realized that it is just regular adwords extension. So now I am at total loss of understanding. There is essentially no difference in adwords local extension and local ads, so why will anyone advertise at adwords and pay $4 a click, when I can purchase Local Ads at just $50 a month.
But oh wait. This is just available in Google Chrome only. On Firefox, the search displays still old format.
Lol So now another feature of using Google Chrome. You will get adwords local extension with balloons.
My request to big G – Please don’t go Yahoo way. We appreciate your concept of keeping it simple. We understand that you are a corporate now and all that big stuff. But please keep it simple. Don’t confuse us with tens of different formats, same advertisement being offered with two type of google ads, different ad formats on IE, Firefox and Chrome. Please go the way you are famous for, that is SIMPLE way.
Notice 1 & 2 in blue balloon. Also notice 1 in blue balloon in map as well – This is on Chrome
Same search on Firefox. No blue balloon – Just a Plus sign and address
Once again I will try to analyze Jeremy’s post logically.
First off my advice to Jeremy – Life is too short. Never make personal enemies. Every dog has his own day. As of now reading your second post to me it seem like due to whatever reason it is a personal enemity or personal grudge that you are carrying against Dennis.
To me, latest post has two main points. One is to say that people in Blitzlocal’s Board of Advisor do not know Dennis ‘very’ well. Understood. If tomorrow Jeremy makes a post against Barry claiming him to be a drug pusher, my comment also is I don’t know Barry ‘very’ well.
Actually to me it is very clear that all people mentioned on the list were the friends / acquaintances of Dennis. Even son of one person was working in Dennis company. In the world of Internet and even in company law, there is no specific designation for advisors. Advisors are the people who advise you / your company. Reading all the posts in my mind I have not even a bit of doubt that all three people were knowing Dennis and his firm ‘quite’ well if not ‘very’ well. Had that not been case, these people should have sued him long back for using their their name falsely on Blitzlocal’s web-site.
Jeremy has indeed made some very serious allegations against Dennis regarding extortion. Since Jeremy claims to have the list of people who have contacted Jeremy regarding extortion attempts by Dennis, probably it will be wise for Jeremy to contact FBI or at least post names of the people so that a strong legal case can be made against Dennis. However I have a doubt in my mind that why these powerful corporate / people (They can call Jeremy direct) does not have even the most basic mind of going to Police / FBI against an attempt of extortion. Rather they are coming to Jeremy asking his suggestion on what to do. Jeremy also should have taken this matter very seriously and instead of wasting time on writing on the blog, being a good citizen he should have immediately called the appropriate authority. If you know a crime is being committed and you do not report it then in essence you are supporting the criminal. So again all I say is if indeed extortion had happened then take legal course of action instead of just mud sliding.
The other thing that caught my attention was Jeremy’s strong insistence on Plenty Of Fish founder Markus Frind ‘s involvement in the company. Hah is it merely coincidental that these two people share enmity since wayback in 2006. Check Shoemoney vs Markus in 2006
It is possible that Dennis may not respond at all, however going by the nature of the post written by shoe, I will expect Dennis to respond to it. Though Dennis clearly commented at our site that to him it really does nto matter if he gets visitor to his blog or not, whereas shoemoney is more famous for his blog. Let’s see what’s there in store.
Disclaimer #1: Barry is Loyal puppy to Shoe .
Disclaimer # 2: I am as independant as Bloomberg
Disclaimer #3: We don’t know any of these names mentioned on my blog either personally nor as a company we ever did any business with.
I always make a point not to slam someone when you are having a current bitter experience. In that case, most of the stuff you write becomes too personal.
However, since so long I wanted to slam cj.com and today they gave a chance.
I used to use cj during good ole days of 2003 when there was no alternate. Just CJ, Befree, valueclick, linkshare. Later CJ swallowed Befree and Valueclick.
Fast forward to 2009, cj still lives in 2003 mode. Publishers do not carry any value at all with them.
Before I go into my personal experience, here are a few top reasons why I quit using them. I am no biggie still I used to do a consistant 3-4K a month in 2003-04.
1. They started charging $10 per month to publisher if your account is not producing any revenue. Haha never heard in web’s history.
2. Eventually your account will be shut down if you were not using them and then you have to open up a new account with all your approved advertisers gone.
3. Working with cj, no news is good news. Never will cj call you with their ideas of how can they help you increase your traffic / revenue. They will only call on the slightest suspicion and will put your account on hold.
4. Affiliate Manager – Cj does not even know if this term exists. There is no personal touch at all.
5. Campaigns – If you get rejected by any advertiser, there is very little that cj can assist. Compare it with XY7, we talked to our affiliate manager Brandon. They were not having an exact campaign for us, they took the pain to find out the campaign exclusive for us and they are taking pains to even change the graphic etc for the campaign.
6. Payments – Totally on the mercy of advertiser. They have all rights to extend your payment. Once advertisers review your payment, extend it, then clock it, then lock it, then close it, then whatever it, then you will get in the queue of getting the payment. Then probably you will get payment on day 75-90 of when you generated the payment. Hah if you are spending money on PPC, you are indeed screwed for big time.
7. Compare with any other affiliate program. The moment you start doing $100 a day, the affiliate manager will start following you. You will get a raise. You can negotiate the rates. You will even get the weekly wires for as little as $1 K a week. I got that while dealing with Azoogle, copeac, cpaempire, xy7, millnic, hydra and a few others. With CJ if you make $1 K a week, get ready for your commission to be extended for another month and then be ready for the dreaded email from their quality people.
8. After very long time I used CJ in the month of September. Made may be $150-$200 (After stopping the campaign in passive earning though I made like $700 at cj). Obviously in the month of October, commission got extended. Hah now after 75 days of actually generating the revenue I have been asked by CJ to prove from where I generated traffic. Obviously I stopped using that campaign same time when they extended the commission. Got a very good deal from Randy @ Pricelinepartnernetwork. They pay me weekly and currently I am doing over 5K a week with them.
And that is my experience who has been using cj on and off since 2001.
Haha. Oh yes By The Way when they acquired valueclick same thing happened. Valueclick owed me some very little amount, not even worthwhile doing follow up (like $80-$85). So I simply forgot that money and never really followed up with valueclick. After 5 years, two months back started getting some nice emails regarding my past due and was asked to update my profile immediate like within 24 hours. Obviously spare $80 does not byte. Updated the profile and all such, nice email communication – But no money.
Heck I am done with them for good. If they pay me my remaining $700 good else it is not even worthwhile to follow the paper tail with these morons.
Hello everyone! This post is about Denis Yu, the disgraced owner of Blitzlocal.
While reading this post at Shoemoney, what caught my attention really is, there is more to it than what has been written over here. As a neutral spectator if I see the events now, to me it seem like a business deal gone bad and now it is all nothing but mud sliding. Obviously Jeremy and Dennis shared very warm and cordial relationship for quite some time. They even went on to the extent of Dennis’s team spending quite a bit of time in redesigning Jeremy’s most famous ringtone site. After putting efforts of quite a few months, Jeremy even though liked the new design, but was not convinced that he really wanted to deal with Dennis, so he broke off with Dennis. Obviously it is a big loss to Dennis in terms of time and money spent on Jeremy.
One other thing that I noticed is when Dennis complaint abt Shoemoney FB promotion techniques on FB (using redirection). Obviously as per the Terms And Conditions of FB / most PPC u cant do redirect, but I personally know that most of the big names and smaller included have done redirection at one point or other. I won’t really be surprised / shocked if there is a little truth in that. I mean heck it is not stealing and obviously doing no redirect is the phenomenon created by G and FB so that they can suck up more Dollars from advertisers.
We had been in a similar situation with one of the very famous forum owner. Our relationship lasted exactly 24 hours. Within 24 hours, we were told very candidly that our two firms cannot work in partnership. It was painful, but that was a good professional approach. We didn’t lose much other than a few days of legal documentation and a few hours worth of programming. However in this deal, it seems like Dennis suffered big time. He lost some good money, time and obviously when deal went sour, even his old friends quit him. Obviously given a choice between Jeremy and Dennis Scott Ricther will chose Jeremy any day. Similarly all the big names who are saying that they had never been involved with Dennis, to me it seem highly unlikely. When I see http://www.blitzlocal.com/stephan-spencer-joins-blitzlocals-board-of-advisors/, I see all big people mentioned over there as advisors. Now almost all are jumping from the sinking ship claiming they had never really been in the ship at the first place.
I don’t know but I find it very ironic that I see Gillian mentioned in Board Of Advisors at BlitzLocal, even Jeremy saying he was told that Gillian is a CFO in the venture, even her son worked in Blitzlocal (obviously now it is claimed that he was recruited on the basis of merit – How convenient) – Now I see her claiming that she never really had been the part of the venture at all.
Similarly Scott Ritcher (I am a great fan of Scott), obviously he had been involved with Dennis – May be it was to get the account of Jeremy or may be the smooth talk of Dennis. Whatever it is, but the matter of fact is Dennis has got the X factor. In such a little time he was able to make deals with all the biggies in the industry. May be he lacked the vision or he lacked in the focus of making money, but truth remains that he indeed got something into him that at one point of time almost all biggies of IM were wining and dining with him.
I don’t care much about personal bashing. In past I had seen Jeremy bashing quite a few persons / companies and later licking his wounds and going back on his words. Most of these companies / people are way bigger than they were when they were bashed at the shoemoney blog. So if Dennis plays his cards right, he may emerge out as a winner.
Disclaimer #1: The views expressed in this post are exclusively my views. My partner Barry is a big time fan of Shoemoney and agrees 100% with whatever he says. Disclaimer #2: I do not have any personal or business relationship with Dennis. As a matter of fact couple of months back our company talked to Dennis regarding a partnership but that never materialized. I guess it was because at that time Blitzlocal was more busy with Jeremy. Disclaimer #3: I read at various posts, that Dennis screwed his employees as well. I do not condone this activity of Dennis. I hope that in future he takes a lesson and treats his employees with more dignity.
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