Excellent Viral Marketing Website

Don’t Pass It On

I dare you NOT to social bookmark or forward the URL of the following website to your pals.

This is an excellent example of a viral marketing website. Why?

1. It’s fun.
2. It’s clever.
3. It’s easy to tell people about it.
4. It takes about 2 minutes of your time but it’s worth it.

Watch it to the end.

http://producten.hema.nl/

Now, thinking caps on for your own viral marketing gimmick.

NEW Google Pay Per Action – Affiliate For The Masses?

Google Pay-Per-Action

Google have a new paid search service on trial at the moment. Google pay-per-action is different to Googles pay-per-click in that the advertiser sets an amount they are willing to pay should a conversion be made by a visitor that entered their site via a Google pay-per-action advert.

If the visitor aborts the sales funnel the advertiser pays nothing to Google. Fair enough say you.

Google Are A Clever Bunch

Google have cleverly introduced and made advertising accessible to even the smallest enterprises. People are now used to the concept of pay-per-click and many non-tech business owners quite happily manage there own Google Adwords campaigns. Now it would appear that Google are poised to introduce this vast market to a service previously used only by web savy affiliates.

Google pay-per-action will be affiliate marketing for the non-tech masses and in true Google style the potential is massive.

Web Affiliates have used ‘pay for completed action’ for many years. The system works well because if a website performs well the website owner gets paid, the advertiser gets paid, the buyer gets their goods and everyone is happy! Google have not reinvented the wheel here but it looks like the wheel is about to get bigger… MUCH BIGGER!

What does this mean for websites that do not achieve great conversion rates?

Well it’s in Google’s interest that the high conversion rate websites make it to the top of the Ad list, so Google’s algorithms will probably change to account for this. If your website logs poor conversion rates there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself to the back of the ad line position (I’m guessing here). This might result in a general improvement in websites that sign up for the service and that want to be competitive, which is a good thing, right?

Question is how will it work?

Websites that have thousands of pages will surely enjoy a higher number of conversions than a small ‘local store’. Now the small store’s conversion rate/ratio may actually be higher than the large store but the overall value of conversions may be a fraction of the big store’s.

What would you do if you were Google in that scenario? Would you favour the site with the higher conversion ratio put with lower earnings over the website that earns you 100 or 1000 times the income every day but with a lower conversation ratio?

I’m sure Google have this figured out a long time ago, they’re a clever bunch. Anyway, keep your eye’s peeled for a message in your AdWords account notifying you of a new Google pay-per-action service.

MySpace YourSpace?

Despite criticism from some web standards evangelists, MySpace.com is one of those community on-line resources that throws up more than the occasional gem.

Background to this post

My wife and I are working with our neighbours and friends on a project to ultimately set-up an internationally recognised school of art in our little village. This year we are organizing a arts and cultural festival for the week ending with the August bank holiday weekend to help highlight the future Art school in Annascaul, Co. Kerry. The festival ends with a day long music festival being held in the Connor /Crean Centre in Annascaul Village. We’re really pleased that our team member (Vinnie Flynn) has lined up some extremely talented up-and-coming bands for the River Of Shadows, Annascaul Music festival.

This is the ‘tip’ of this post:

Before the Internet you’d have to look for these bands demos or debut releases in small music stores and friend’s underground collections; but now you don’t have to search, beg copies or simply believe me when I say these bands really are the cream of new Irish bands. Now you can just listen to their music and decide for yourself thanks to free web spaces  on the likes of www.MySpace.com

Here’s three bands from the line-up playing on the day. Why not have a listen to them as you read the rest of this post? (Delorentos are headlining.)

• Delorentos
• SuperJimenez
• Vesta Varro

Thanks to myspace these bands have a free web platform that can be visually customized as they see fit. They get to plug-in to a vibrant community that wants to share the treasures they’ve found on-line with their friends and their friend’s friends. This is a powerful platform for bands and other groups, individuals, organizations and businesses.

Here’s what MySpace has to say about itself:

[MySpace is an on-line community that lets you meet your friends’ friends.

Create a private community on MySpace and you can share photos, journals and interests with your growing network of mutual friends!

See who knows who, or how you are connected. Find out if you really are six people away from Kevin Bacon.]

MySpace – What’s In It For You?

Could you benefit from a presence on MySpace or similar community social networking sites? If you’re in a band I’d say the answer is yes. There’s plenty of other disciplines represented on MySpace, is yours one of them? If not, be the first!

Want Some Free Tickets To See the Delorentos?

Hopefully you’ve listened to a couple of tracks from those bands I mentioned above. Now do you believe me when I say they’re good? BTW, here’s a little info on the Music Festival in Annascaul 2007, more details added soon, plus a chance to win some free tickets to see the Delorentos!