Epicenter Network Blog

I think the Slap Chop is my most recent favorite as-seen-on-tv offer. Before that it was the Split Ender and the Snuggie. I am also a fan of the Peekaru, although I hope to never see anyone I know wearing one.

The weird thing is that I don’t have cable, so I don’t ever get to actually see these offers advertised on television. But I do get to see them when I add new as-seen-on-tv offers to our network, and the demonstration videos always make me feel like I need it.

Here are some of the newest as-seen-on-tv offers added to the Epicenter network:

• Pasta-n-More
Cook, drain and serve your pasta all in one! You just fill it with water, add pasta and stick it in the microwave. There is also a cute little old lady with a great poof-do that does the demonstration video.

• Sheer Skin
Summer is right around the corner ladies, which means it’s time to bust out those legs. The Sheer Skin gently exfoliates your hair away, without the pain of shaving, waxing or creams. Side note: It works by using micro crystals, so don’t scrub too hard.

• LifeShake
If you own a George Foreman grill and love it, then imagine how much better you’ll feel with his LifeShake ultimate diet shake. It’s high in protein and fiber and speeds up your metabolism. It has been coined the “meal of a champion”.

• Vazopren
This one is for the men. Since this is a PG-13 blog, I won’t get into the details, but this is a male enhancement supplement with a racy offer page. It’s a trial offer too, so you have nothing to lose, only gain…

To wrap this up I wanted to share a Slap Chop remix, brought to us by the infamous ShamWow criminal.

Interested in running any of these offers? Contact me: @EpiKim or AIM: KimatEpicenter

During a media course in college, my professor informed the class that anything we did online could not only be tracked, but was probably being monitored and someone was always watching what you were doing. Apart from the fact that this professor was a complete wackjob, he did have a valid point.

Nowadays you can pretty much find anything you want online. You can dig up cached pages, find pictures that friends thought they deleted and have information discovered about yourself when someone Googles you before a date.

So is this all bad? I’d say no. With the convenience and benefits of the mass sharing of information, some pitfalls should be expected. I’m willing to have my activity monitored as long as I can have access to other’s online activity and use that data to target marketing campaigns.

If only congress felt the same way.

The House subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet met Thursday to discuss new online privacy legislations for ISP-based and behavioral ad targeting technologies. Here is the opening statement from Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Rick Boucher:

“The thought that a network operator could track a user’s every move on the Internet, record the details of every search and read every email or attached document is alarming.”

The focus of the meeting then turned to an act from 2002 that never made it through legislation – Cliff Stearns’ Consumer Privacy Protection Act. This act would require data collectors to notify consumers about data collection and usage.

The committee would like this act to be the guide for a future online privacy bill that would require data collectors to disclose the information they are gathering and how they will use and also enables consumers to act on this notification.

Stearns did acknowledge that overreaching privacy regulation could have a negative effect on business. He then went on to say that search engines and ad networks should also be considered for regulation.

Industry reps that attended the meeting voiced their concerns and stated that new legislation may not be necessary. Loopt, who was present, said business needs to be at the table if and when the law is written.

For now, no bill has been passed or drafted. Similar hearings on the matter are expected to be held sometime this summer.

When it comes to ranking with SEO, don’t focus entirely on textual content. Many people overlook the power of images and graphics for their attention grabbing and link grabbing abilities. However, with the proper use of image tags and descriptions you can easily take advantage of Google’s ranking system and help bump your site even higher in rank results.

Here are a few steps to follow to ensure that you are getting the most out of your images.

1. Describe your image
Always use the alt attribute when you include an image on your site. Create a short and sweet description of your image and keep in mind the keywords you are targeting. Another thing to consider is that these descriptions are read by search engines and translated to speech readers for the visually impaired. Therefore, this not only helps improve your search results, but also extends your audience.

2. Don’t embed text into your images
Yes, this looks fancy and having pretty text is fun, but try to avoid it. Search engines don’t recognize this text, so it won’t help you. However, if you can’t overcome the urge, be sure to insert alt text and consider using a text description next to your image.

3. Name your files
If you’re in a hurry it’s easy to save an image as IMG1.jpg. Don’t do this. If you are working with a lot of images at once it can be tedious to name each one individually, but taking the time to do this will help out in the long run. Try to include the page title, page content and alt tag into the file name. If someone searches for “all natural weight loss pills”, you are more likely to show up as a result with an image titled ‘all natural RezV supplement’ than you are with ‘IMG1234.jp’.

4. Take advantage of image sharing sites
Upload your images on sites like Flickr, Wikipedia or Picassa and then link them back to your site. The more places your images can be found, the better.

5. Link back to previous posts
If an image or the content related to the image relates to a previous post, link back to it. This follows the same basic idea of linking keywords or phrases to previous posts.

What if you could strengthen your heart, live longer, lose weight and be more like Oprah? Would you do it? What if I also told you that it came in pill form and you could buy it online? Are you sold yet?

I’m talking about Resveratrol, the latest in weight loss and anti-aging.

In a nutshell, resveratrol contains the same anti-oxidants found in red wine that help with longevity and overall health. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, there is no alcohol in the pill.

Oprah had Dr. Oz on her show a while back and he explained that resveratrol is all natural, slows aging, fights disease, may play a role in reversing diabetes and can help prevent cancer.

http://www.dailymotion.com/videox8srsc

Since then, the pill has taken off in popularity and is a widely searched product online. This is probably going to get bigger than the famous Acai supplements and is a good product to start promoting if you are an online marketer.

Get the best payout and check out Epicenter’s exclusive RezV Pure offer here.

Interested in joining the Epicenter network? Contact me and I’ll get you started.

After talking with several affiliates today that are running ads on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, I decided to take a look at the potential of this marketplace and get the inside scoop on how to optimize ads and who to market to.

What I found is that advertising on social networks goes way beyond the typical placements, sizes and interactions options and even beyond clicks and impressions, and spans into a combination of ads and social interaction.

When advertising on sites like Facebook, the goal is to encourage peer-to-peer interaction, run Engagement Ads and get people to become fans and share your content with others. This means you’ve got to think outside the typical ad placement box and make your ad more of an interactive product.

During my research I came across some really cool stats on Facebook users that provide a little more insight on who uses the site, why they are there and how to get their attention. Here some of the stats I found most interesting.

• In the Northeastern U.S., Facebook has 900 users per every 10 square miles

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the 5th most populated nation on the planet

• Facebook ranks above all other sites for time spent and pages viewed

• The fastest growing demographic of users on Facebook is women over 55 (Luckily my mom’s online interaction is limited to AOL and she has no interest of venturing elsewhere.)

I was most surprised to find that it is the older generations that are frequenting their Facebook pages more than younger users. This would be a good potential market for health and beauty offers along the lines of age reducing creams (Age Invisible), diet supplements (Green Tea Fit) or other types of skin care offers (DermAcai).
(P.S. if you are interested in running any of these offers, they are available at Epicenter…)

Another way to get your banners noticed on these social sites is to use chiclets. If you don’t know what these are, then you need to read this article.

If anyone else has ideas on how to optimize social network ads, I’d love to hear from you.

Perhaps I’m a little bias when saying this, but content is one of the most important – dare I say the most important – component for an agency or individual marketer’s success. It’s what draws a visitor in, keeps them engaged and ultimately causes them to react in one way or another.

A copywriter does more than just translate a company’s product into words; they often are a key part of brainstorming, coming up with new ideas and contributing to the overall creative process.

So how good is your site’s content? For those of you that have been blessed with a strong left and right sided brain, you may not need to hire an outside copywriter, as you can create content just fine. However, if you don’t have the strongest grasp on grammar or have a difficult time writing compelling content, you may want to outsource.

One of my favorite sites for finding freelance writers is Peter Shankman’s helpareporter.com. I have used this site in the past to find guest bloggers, PR freelancers, sources for articles and other content writers. It’s free, fast and really one of the best places to find a content writer.

Even if you are a good writer yourself, you may want to consider having guest bloggers or freelancing some of your content projects just to get a fresh take on things. You definitely want to stick with the same tone and goal of your site, but adding fresh content and new ideas can help re-engage people and attract new visitors.

Here is a list of free online tutorials for content writing.

• Pandecta.com
• Sherus.com
• Copyblogger.com

Social media is fictitious. You can’t measure it, can’t participate in it and sure can’t make any money out of it. Your ROI will be zero and your attempts at success will be futile.

Aside from sounding like a total Debbie Downer, I’m actually attempting to reiterate the opinions of Augustine Fou who clears up the difference between social media and social networking.

With traditional forms of media – television, radio and print – marketers can buy airtime or print space and make money. People’s conversations, on the other hand, can’t be purchased by advertisers, so they can’t be considered media.

Ok, I’ll accept that. However, I would still consider social networking sites, forums and online communities a loose form, or second tier, of media. Sure, you can’t make direct profits from starting conversations, but you can improve your brand visibility and in the end, attract more people to your product.

I do agree with Fou when he says you can’t measure your ROI with “social media”. You can’t do this because your returns on the time you invest are not direct and may not result in purchases. So how do you measure your returns?

Examine your social actions and social intensity. What are people saying about you or your product? How many are interacting, leaving reviews, commenting or sharing? What is the rate and quality of these interactions? Once those questions are answered, look for patterns of things that worked and keep socializing.

To be successful you need to provide a place for your fans to talk. Make sure that this place is easy to find and that positive feedback is archived and can easily be found by new visitors. Make sure that you have an awesome product and give it to a few people for free and let them do the advertising for you. Then, just be present online and keep the conversation going.

End the end, Fou explains, you have to look at it as social marketing and not social media. Don’t pay for it and don’t try to measure it with conventional media metrics.

If you are a blogger looking to improve your site’s SEO, be sure not to overlook long tail keywords. Trying to rank higher by just focusing on a group of main keywords will only get you so far and won’t bring in the total volume you are looking for.

The problem with only using one or more main keywords is that there may be a great deal of competition and you will have a hard time ranking well on search engines. Using long tail keywords give you an advantage because they reach out to a more targeted audience and have less competition.

If you don’t already know what long tail keywords are, here is a definition: long tail keywords are groups of keywords that aren’t too common when by themselves, but when put together in phrases attract a more targeted audience to your pages.

So how do you find these longtail keywords? There are a few ways to find this information, the first of which is to use your site statistics. Most statistics programs, like Google Analytics, will provide you with a list of keywords people used to get to your site. Look for the longer phrases people used and write a post around those search phrases. Also be sure to link back to past posts to improve your exposure even more.

Another place to find these keywords is to use Google’s free keyword tool, which provides you with variations of similar keywords to your main keyword target. You can search for exact matches or broad matches to increase your range of keywords.

Although long tail keywords won’t bring in the same amount of traffic that a popular main keyword will, they will be easier to rank for and place you higher on the page of search results. Additionally, the more long tail keywords you use, the more your number of visitors will add up, equaling about the same as if you were able to rank for a main, popular keyword.

Here is an exciting announcement for small businesses and non–profits: free webinars focused around technology tips and techniques to help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your organizations. The webinars will be held on the second Wednesday of every month starting tomorrow and ending in July, starting at noon EST.

These webinars are part of the Talking Tech series sponsored by FormSpring and will feature special speakers from a handful of different companies. Each session is composed of three 15 minute webinars and a Q&A session.

The first speaker for tomorrow’s webinar is Pat East, president and CEO from Hanapin Marketing. He will be talking about how to make SEO and PPC strategies work for businesses and organizations with different needs and objectives.

Also in tomorrow’s session, you will hear presenters from Cantaloupe talking about basic video marketing techniques and FormSpring will discuss online data collection methods.

Click here to register.

Building your online presence is an important part of branding yourself and for those who use influence to drive product sales or traffic, you know how important it is to get noticed. This is what blogs, social profiles, forums and other sharing media are for. So after following all the steps of getting noticed, how do you measure your success or know just how many people are actually noticing you?

The basic definition of influence is having an implicit or explicit effect of one thing on another. In online terms, this means your words causing someone to think or do something. The frustrating thing about building influence is that you can say the most profound things and share really excellent tips, but if you aren’t effectively promoting your thoughts, they simply go unnoticed.

Let’s break personal influence down into three parts: brand, expertise and trust. This is when you define who you are and what you stand for, display your knowledge and gain your audience’s trust. To earn trust online you must continuously present correct information, respond to visitor comments, provide breaking news or provide a solution to someone’s problem.

So now that we’ve defined what online influence is, let’s look at how to measure it.

Here are 7 ways to measure your influence, as share by Micah Baldwin from Mashable.

Incoming Traffic – visitors, pageviews, search engine traffic, RSS subscribers, repeat visitors
Incoming Links – are people linking back to your site?
Reader Engagement – Comments, time spent on your site
Recommendations – Retweets, Stumbled, shared
Connections – How many “friends” do you have on social networks?
Track Record – number of blog posts, the age of your domain
Engagement – how long have you been active online?

You can find the stats to the above measures through analytics programs or by placing tracking pixels on your site. If you want to measure your influence via your blog, check out these tools/widgets: PostRank, Outbrain/WP-Post Ranking, Feedburner/TiwitterCounter and Zemanta.