Epicenter Network Blog

Epicenter announced yesterday the addition of display advertising to the DM2 platform. This new feature is free to all users and expands the possibilities for domain owners and site publishers to increase their potential site revenue.

As I’ve blogged about before, DM2 requires no software purchases, offers over 250 design templates and domain customization with unlimited pages, content and a sitemap. It also offers free hosting and now integrates display advertising for affiliate marketing and online advertising.

The best part about this new integration is the revenue sharing arrangement. Site owners are paid for their ad impressions, regardless of whether the visitor clicks on the ad or not.

Essentially, we want DM2 to be the best Web building destination for people looking to make money online.

For more information, check out the official press release here or here.

Want to build your own site and start making money? Sign up here.

Last year, New York passed a law that would collect tax from online shoppers, in an attempt to “level the playing field” between online retailers and mortar retailers. This year, South Carolina wants to do the same thing.

David Hoyle, NC Senator, says it’s not fair that online merchants avoid a sales tax when mortar and investment companies with a “physical presence” must pay them. He says enforcing a tax on online merchants will help the state break out of their budget crisis.

Is this really the best solution? This tax will only produce a short term gain, as it will most likely be offset by the loss of business and revenue from affiliate marketers.

Amazon has already announced that they will sever their ties with all North Carolina affiliates once the law is passed. So what happens when all these affiliates are dropped? That is a big loss on income tax.

What can you do as an affiliate? Don’t sit back and take it.

After all the delays and pushed back cancelation dates, today marks the last day of analog television.

What does this mean to me? Nothing, really. I only own one really ghetto t.v. with basic cable and a cable box. So since I can still watch Man vs. Wild with no problems, I haven’t paid much attention to this. I did wonder, however, why we were making the switch.

Here is the explanation in a nutshell, minus other federal and economic reasons that I didn’t want to get into.

Apparently, current television broadcast signals travel through the electromagnetic spectrum along with AM and FM radio, shortwave radio and radar. They take up a large chunk of this spectrum and by switching them to digital, they will take up 25% less space. The digital code is also more concise, has the ability to be high-definition and can have surround-sound encoded into it.

The new space created by the switch from analog to digital were returned to the federal government and auctioned off to new providers and services. They made over $19 billion.

Now I have learned something and maybe you have as well.

In the search world, this has companies running more digital tv ads and more people searching for “digital tv” related keywords. Google Trends shows that searches for the digital transition are 10% of this morning’s top searches. If you have a way to capitalize on this trend, you should probably take advantage of it now.

Are you new to search marketing or looking for some funding to improve your skills? If you said yes, then you should consider applying for the SEM Scholarship from Marketing Pilgrim.

Here is a brief description of the scholarship contest:

We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Over a 4 week period we tally the traffic count and send the top 5 most visited entries to our panel of expert judges. They pick their favorite, and the winner helps themselves to a prize package worth over $10,000!

If you win the contest, not only are you given $10,000 but you also receive a prize package full of SEM and SEO event passes, memberships and subscriptions. A few of these include a premium membership to SEOmoz.org, a subscription to SoloSEO.com and passes to SMX East and Pubcon.

Want to enter? The deadline is June 22nd at 6pm Eastern time. Click here for full entry details.

Microsoft’s newest search engine, Bing will go live June 3rd. They are calling it a “decision engine” and claim that it provides more intelligent search tools to simply tasks and help people make more informed decisions. Developers wanted Bing to focus on enabling people to actually use the information they find, rather than just providing them with search results.

Bing is starting out by focusing on four main verticals:

     • Making a purchase decision
     • Planning a trip
     • Finding a local business
     • Researching a health condition

Microsoft says that Bing will replace their Live Search’s core search with advancements such as query intent recognition, entity extraction and expansion and document summarization technology. Virtual Earth will be rebranded as Bing Maps for Enterprise and the cashback program will be renamed Bing cashback.

So what does this really mean when it comes to search? Possibly an increase in impressions. The project was given a bigger marketing budget than Xbox, so many predict it will start off with a bang. Many feel that conversion rates and ROI are almost always better on Microsoft compared to other engines, so the new advances in Bing could make your stats even better.

If you want to find out more before it launches, go to DiscoverBing.com.

So do I think I will start “binging-it” more than googling-it? Hard to say. I can say that it will be hard to compete and overcome such a giant in search.

Whenever I need to do some research, find an image or perform any kind of web browsing, Google is my search engine of choice. I’ve gotten pretty good at finding what I need and modifying search terms to produce more exact results. This is probably why Google captures over 60% of U.S. online searches.

However, it’s important to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there. You also have the other two big players – Yahoo! and MSN – and a handful of up-and-comers looking to offer their own unique approaches to online search engines.

Here are a few to check out.

• Kosmix
This engine is in the “beta-ish” stage and incorporates more real-time search results. Information is sorted by source – ie. If it came from Twitter, Hulu, YouTube, blogs or government – and has about 12 different search categories, or featured searches.

• Twine
This is more of a community search engine where you create an account and receive tailored search results. You customize your interest feeds and are provided with results based on your Web use.

• Searchme
Call themselves the first multimedia search engine. It’s interface is similar to that of iTunes and allows for easier sorting and shuffling through videos, images and music.

• Hakia
Hakia’s search results come from sites that are recommended by librarians – which I guess would make this helpful for school reports. There is a link on the homepage that says “Compare to Google” where you are given the Hakia challenge and you get to see side-by-side search results for the two search engines.

• Wolfram Alpha
This is a computational knowledge engine, so it’s more of a calculator than a search. Even if an answer to your question doesn’t exist online, Alpha will use algorithms to gather data and produce the answer for you.

• Cuil
This start-up has already deemed themselves as the world’s biggest search engine – stating they search three times more pages than Google and 10 times more than Microsoft.

• Scoopler
This is another real-time search engine. It takes updates and feeds from a variety of social networks – like Twitter and FriendFeed – and sorts through them to display results.

In our current economic state, the trend for many laid off employees is to ride out the recession in the classroom. Enrollment for online courses is higher than ever, as people head back to school for a bachelor’s degree or to continue their education with a master’s degree or specialized certification.

This is a great trend for online colleges and even better for online marketers. As more people get laid off, they are probably spending more time online looking for jobs, updating their Facebook profiles way too frequently, or looking for a good deal on online classes.

At Excelsior College, for example, online enrollment is up 30% from last year. Other schools, like the UC Berkeley Extension, have since spikes in enrollment for their certificate programs, as more and more people are looking to update their skills in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Take advantage of this trend of eager virtual learners through compelling testimonials, interactive online college lead gen sites and motivational content – “Never let a down economy squash your dreams”.

Epicenter has well over a dozen offers generated toward getting people back to school and have been seeing really good conversion rates. Interested in any of these offers? Leave a comment or leave me a message here.

Also, following this trend of online learners is also the work-at-home-online-mom/dad trend. Lots of our biz-opp offers have been doing really well, as they provide people with the materials to make money online from the comfort of home.

There have been a lot of bloggers jumping on the “fatblogging” bandwagon lately, and I’ve got to say that it is becoming pretty hard to resist the urge to join.

However, being a girl and all, I’m not too interested in posting my weight online. I’d rather approach the whole thing in terms of toning rather than weight loss and improving my overall nutrition. This issue has been discussed between the ladies here in the Epicenter office, and here is the plan we have come up with.

First things first, we are going to clean up our eating habits. For me, this will entail consuming less adult beverages and going cold turkey on pop. I will also cut down on my carb intake, which is in still in marathon training mode and that ended last week.

Next, we are attending a spinning class every Tuesday and Thursday at lunch. For the remaining week days, we will switch it up on the treadmill, elliptical and bike and add in some weight lifting.

The goal is to be toned up in time for our Epicenter retreat in July and for Affiliate Summit in August.

Starting June 4th Google plans to open up trademarked keywords to AdWords advertisers. This is going to make for some heated battles in the search engine results pages over company names, branded products and services.

Google released a list of 200 countries that are allowed to purchase rival trademarks as keywords to trigger display ads. Check out the complete list here.

However, this is new is not entirely new. Google has allowed for bidding on trademarked keywords in the past, but would slap you on the hand if they received any complaints. The difference now is that trademarked companies’ complaints won’t be accepted. You also still can’t use a competitor’s trademark in your ad.

For affiliate marketers, this opens up the potential for more money. However, there are still many advertisers that enforce their own rules for keyword restrictions, and those will still have to be followed.

This decision comes at an interesting time, as a prior court ruling in 2006 was overturned recently in the Rescuecom v. Google case. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently reversed the lower court ruling and said that recommending and “selling” a trademark to an advertiser to trigger a sponsored link could violate trademark law.

They went on to say that even product placements could be subject to trademark law if the trademark holder could prove that the consumers were confused.

Good luck proving that one.

Affiliate Summit – Aug. 9-11, New York.
If you will be attending Affiliate Summit this summer, be sure to stop by the Epicenter booth. We will be sporting new Epicenter attire and a company booth babe (@EpiMonica) will be present to sign autographs and take pictures.

Tracking 202 Pro Discount – Ongoing
If you haven’t taken advantage of this deal yet, contact your affiliate manager to get signed up. If you are interested in more information, contact me at @EpiKim.

Tracking 202 Laptop Giveaway – ends when T202 promo ends
Request your discount code for the new Tracking 202 Pro today and your name will be entered to win a brand new MacBook Air.

Resveratrol Offers – Ongoing
Looking to get in on the latest trend in weight loss and anti-aging? Epicenter is currently offering 4 resveratrol offers – one is an exclusive landing page – at generous payouts. Contact Epicenter for more information or message KimatEpicenter on AIM.

Epicenter Company BUMP Competition – t.b.d.
The employees of Epicenter will be taking their skills to the b-ball court for a not-so-friendly game of Bump. Game results and video will be made available.

Net 7 Payment Terms –ongoing
What is better than making money online? How about getting paid for your traffic on a weekly basis? If you are already an affiliate, contact your affiliate manager to set up your payment plan.

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