MarketingSherpa's Online Advertising Handbook reviewed

I have been neglecting this blog - not due to blogger's block or lack of topics but simply because I am up to my neck with work. Unlike other full time bloggers, I have to juggle blogging with my research, part-time jobs and taking care of my kids. Really busy with my research work and have my upgrade presentation on the 6th of next month. Anyway, I have had some free time and this is a long overdue review of MarketingSherpa's new book- the '2008 Online Advertising Handbook with Benchmarks'.

The book has four chapters and covers everything from budgets and analytics to online branding and method of delivery. This is clearly targeted at practitioners, with real life examples (meaning less theories) and the text is easy to read with easy to understand figures and graphs. For example, a special report on matching rich media design tactics to strategic goals, they have used EyeWonder as an example. The books goes through each of their major campaign objectives along with the strategies used. They are but one of the examples used through out the book to illustrate various online advertising techniques and strategies.

The executive summary points out how online advertisers are ignoring the use of online ads for branding purposes and instead emphasising clicks. I found the book really useful as it is quite relevant to my doctoral research. However, I feel that this book will be highly useful to online advertisers as well as business managers thinking of advertising online. Another feature of the book that I found quite helpful was the Glossary which defines most of the technical terms used in the book and in online advertising circles, some of which have not come into popular academic usage.

This book costs $497/ and I recommend it for both practitioners and academics alike, as well as anyone who's interested in the latest trends in online advertising.

Thanks to Jeanne Hopkins and other guys from the MECLABS Group, MarketingSherpa for sending me a complimentary copy of the book.

Testing out the 3 mobile broadband service

Finally got the chance to give the 3 USB modem a good test run. I am blogging this via 3's mobile broadband service.

I shut of the wireless network in my house and used the dongle to connect to the net.



The first thing I did was to check the connection speed. Here are the results according to Speedtest.net:



The speeds are nothing to boast about but I look at the possibilities - it's amazing to think that I can access the net from almost anywhere in the UK. According to the 3 website, their "network covers 86% of the UK population."



Found this old picture of my son (3.2 MB) in my computer. Uploading it to my Flickr page took around 10 minutes.

Next test area: Nottingham.

Web hosting guide

"Which web hosting company do you recommend?" is one of the most common queries I receive. Well, my answer is that it depends on your requirement and more importantly, your budget. I have tried out several hosts and at present, have websites hosted with 5 different hosts. For example, this blog "SEO Expert" is hosted with Blogger totally FOC.

Anyway, I do keep an eye out for the best deals to recommend to my clients as well as friends who often ask me for my opinion. Just came across one of the best web hosting guides at http://www.webhostingchoice.com. What makes this site stand out from others is the fact that this site is totally ad free.

Searching for your right Web Host is quite easy. Just fill in your desired maximum monnthly Cost and maximum setup fee as well as your desired minimum diskspace (MB) and minimum bandwidth (GB). Then clicking the "Search for Hosts" button should give you a list of all the web hosts that fulfill your requirements.

They have a number of useful information on the site and one that I found particularly interesting was their page on web host scams. I have fallen for some of the tricks mentioned there in the past. If you are new to web hosting, I definitely recommend that you go through their "quick start" page.

Unique gift for Christmas

Christmas is just 21 days away and if you are like the majority of the population, you are probably still wondering what to get for your loved ones this time. I talked to a few people and it was not surprising that the top on the list for ladies were perfumes and gadgets for guys.

Why not get them something unique, something that will be treasured?

I am referring to putting photos on canvas. 'Paint Your Life' is a company that specialises in painting portraits from your photographs. The photographs can be of your favourite pet, wedding portraits, baby pictures or even a landscape. Unlike other companies, these pictures are hand painted by real artists and not computer generated.

It's amazingly simple. You just upload a digital copy of the photo that you want painted. You then choose the style and media type (oil, charcoal, watercolour, etc) and the size. You then make a 20% advance payment and that's it.

You can even preview the painting before receiving it, so that if you are not satisfied, they will make the necessary changes to the painting. Do check the site for the prices and turn around time as they vary on the type of medium and size of the picture.


That's Kelly, one of their satisfied customers.

Will definitely make a treasured gift.

3 Skypephone camera test

The 3 Skypephone I am testing out comes with a 2 megapixel camera. The images are saved in the jpeg format with a 1600 x 1200 px resolution. Unlike some phones (such as the Sony Ericsson K800i and the Nokia 6288), the Skypephone does not come with a flash and night shots or pictures taken in poor light come out bad. However, shots taken in bright light conditions come out much better even though a bit grainy.

Overall the image quality is nothing to shout about but not that bad either. They are definitely better then those taken by my old Motorola L6 and my wife's Nokia 6131.

The pictures below have undergone minor editing (reduction in image size and image rotation) using the IrfanView software.

MarketingSherpa's Landing Page Handbook is AWESOME

MarketingSherpa, a research firm specializing in "what works in marketing", recently launched the 2nd edition of the "Landing Page Handbook: How to Raise Conversions – Data & Design Guidelines" on the 5th of November.



I was quite excited to receive a hard copy of the handbook as it has been three years since they published their first edition of the handbook. The first edition, which was launched in fall of 2004 became a best-seller and literally changed the way online marketers and web designers looked at the impact of landing pages in the success of online campaigns.

For your information, “Landing pages” refer to the pages on your site that visitors land on when they click on a banner ad, link ad, email link or search engine result.

It took me sometime to go through all 273 pages of the book and I have one word to describe it – “AWESOME”.

There are dozens of real case studies along with graphics and statistics. I didn’t count but according to their site, the new edition has a total of 114 sample landing pages. The new edition also has some information about blogs. The information only covers 5 pages but I still found it quite useful – especially the part about email subscription sign-ups. That is something I never even considered.

One feature I especially found interesting was their "eyetracking heatmap" in colour, that shows the high attention zone on a web page.

This book is absolutely invaluable for marketers, web designers, web consultant and SEO practitioners alike.

What do I wish they had included in the handbook?

- More info on blogs
- An index page that would make it easier to search for certain key words.

Other than that, the book was really an eye opener. There are so many small things that is quite obvious but you never thought about. I wish I had come across this book before as I realized the mistakes I had made in the past as a freelance web designer. The book points out simple yet common mistakes we make like not taking into consideration the impact of screen resolution and different browsers – something I learnt through trial and error.

To learn more about the handbook or to purchase a copy, go to: http://www.SherpaStore.com/LandingPageHandbook.html

Thanks Jeanne for sending me a copy.

3 Skypephone: first impressions

Matt from 3mobilebuzz.com was kind enough to send me two 3 Skypephones. I will be testing them out for a month. The first box I opened had the white coloured phone, while the other one was black.



Passed the white phone to my wife and I took the black phone. Placed side by side, the white phone does look better.



I don't know why but somehow, the black coloured phone looked a little cheap at first. It was probably due to the fact that I am presently using a sexy Motorola L6. The dimensions of the phone are 100x44 x13.6mm. It's smaller than my L6 in length but a little bit thicker. However, as they say, don't judge a book by it's cover. The Skypephone is loaded with amazing features found on much costlier phones.

Of course, there's the ability to make Skype calls to all my contacts all around the World and to receive calls from them as well. Then there is the 2 megapixel camera. It gives quite good shots - much better than those taken by my old L6. I will upload some samples later.

The phone also has a decent MP3 player and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the sound through the earphones that are supplied with the phones.

I also appreciate the fact that that they bundled a phone sync software so that I can download and upload stuff from my computer to the phones and vice-versa using a USB 2.0 cable. It's surprising but most phones don't come with a sync software bundled.

Passing it around to my friends - the phone received mostly good reviews except for one friend who pointed out that it didn't have any games installed, apart from two trials versions of Pac man and Tetris. I don't play games on my mobile so I am not particularly concerned with this particular feature. However, it might be a good idea to bundle in some games with the phones for people who do care - especially the younger generation.

The internet connection over the 3G network was really fast (for a mobile) and a search of my ah ok lah blog on Google took only a few seconds. I even posted a comment on my blog using the phone. I later learnt that the phone can be used as a modem to connect my laptop to the net. Look for the review in an upcoming post.

Overall, the 3 Skypephone is a great phone and I haven't found any flaws in it as yet. I am seriously considering using it with a "Pay as you go" account once the trial period is over.

I am going shogging

Have you heard about Shogging? It is made up of the words Shopping and Blogging. This new term is also the name of a brand new and unique comparison shopping engine, that allows customers to Compare, Buy, and blog about the products they're shopping for.

This new concept - the ability to shop and blog (SHOG) within the same user experience, comes from Pepperjam, an internet marketing agency with nearly 10-years of industry experience. Led by President & CEO, Kristopher B. Jones, the company has become one of the fastest growing full-service internet marketing and technology agencies in the US.

Shogging.com is powered by the most cutting-edge tools available , namely AJAX and Python, which integrates e-commerce, search along with the blogging experience. I was listening to exclusive PRWeb Podcast interview with Kristopher. he explains that in traditional e-commerce websites, whenever you write a review you are taken to another page which disrupts the whole shopping experience. In the case of Shogging.com, this does not occur as the customer never leave their unique, individual shopping experience.

After looking at the site, I found that it is one of the best price comparison sites around. It's not surprising as their Merchant Partners include the large online department stores like Wal-Mart, Target and Buy.com, as well as niche e-tailers like Petco, Staples and igourmet. The site mentions that their database lists over 20 million products. Isn't that amazing?

Do you want to become an internet millionaire?

I am sure you do want to be one of the so called "dot com moguls" or in my case, a "dot net mogul". I am no exception as well. Ever since I started blogging as a full time profession early this year, I have done quite well and the earnings have eroded the skeptic in me that thought that it was impossible for someone to earn a living via blogging. However, my earnings pale in comparison to what I read and see how much some of the other bloggers are earning. They did have a head start to me. Of course I admit I have been blogging for a long time - since September 2003 to be precise but to gain out of it financially, was never part of it. To me it was simply a hobby, some place where I could rant and share my thoughts. To tell the truth, initially I was a bit biased against people with ads on their blogs.

Leaving the comfort of a job late, moving to the UK and staying at home looking after the kids near the end of last year made me reconsider the whole thing. I now thought "Hey! other people are making money from their blogs. Why can't I?"

I started out by stalking out the web gurus and all those who have made millions over the net. You can see some of the links on my sidebar. I also went and bought some books- both offline as well as online. After all, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. It is better to go with the tried, trusted and proven methods. At that stage I was still skeptical and I even wanted to make fun of all these so called "web gurus" - the reason I started this blog and also the reason for the funny looking logo. However, after I implemented some of their techniques and the money started trickling in, I changed my mind. Their tips did work. In can now that I earn almost the same amount that I used to earn as a government servant in Malaysia. It's not much considering the exchange rate (£1 = RM 7 approx.) and the standard of living here in the UK but just consider this - I am earning the same amount working at home.

I am always on the look out for tips from other web entrepreneurs who have become an internet millionaire. However, along the way I came across a few scams as well. Quite recently I came across Jerry Allen's "The poor man's guide to becoming an internet millionaire. He points out some of the ways people get scammed by people promising to "make you a million dollars" by working at home. His book is a straight forward entrepreneur guide where he shares his personal experiences in Internet marketing, SEO, increasing traffic to your sites, etc. In his book, Jerry discloses his secret internet millions techniques.

If you do join and am not satisfied with the program, you can ask for your money back within 56 days of purchase for a full refund.

I must warn you that becoming a successful netpreneur does not happen overnight. And it involves a lot of hard work and social networking skills. However, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Just read what other successful web entrepreneurs have gone through and we can learn from their experiences.

Fun games for Mac users

One thing you notice about Mac users is that they are fanatically loyal. They proudly go around with a "Think different" or a "iThink, Therefore iMac" sticker on their car windscreen. Don't even think of even trying to point out any negative about Mac machines. However, there is one thing that most grudgingly agree - that computer games for the Mac are too few. Most computer games are targeted at PC users. I guess it just a matter of targeting the majority of computer users - PC users. However, there might be a great niche market for companies who target the Mac users.

For some great mac games go over to midoritech.com. This company is based in Burgundy, France and they have some great quality recreational games. They have taken two all-time popular games that never goes out of style and come out with versions for the Mac, namely and You can download the demos for free. The full version of the mahjong for the Mac OS X costs $19.95 while the the mac solitaire costs $9.95.

Talking about solitaire brings back memories of spending hours on my dad's computer playing the game dragging cards on the screen. It was a great way to pass time or to relax. This game available for download for PCs as well as the Mac OS. The game developers have compiled a collection of all the favorite solitaire games and more.

Midoritech also carries some games for kids and one of them is called 'Ladybugs'. It is aimed at stimulating your child's thinking and color recognition skills and enjoy at the same time. According to the website, they will have more software and games coming your way in the near future.

Sponsored Review

Lisa Reviews reviewed

Lisa, a fellow PayPerPost postie, has asked me to review her brand new blog 'Lisa Reviews'. This is her second blog and will be solely dedicated to reviews.

I like her new template. Would definitely love to have those great looking social bookmarking buttons on my site as well. I wish that the fonts were a little bigger though. Would make it easier to read the fonts on the dark background.

As the blog is fairly new, it is not surprising that the Google page rank is still 0 but the Alexa rankings (367,973) is good for such a new blog. Exchanging links with blogs having higher PR should help.

I had a look at her website source code as well and would suggest putting up a meta description tag and a meta keyword tag as well. For those who are not familiar with HTML, the meta tags are placed between the

 <HEAD> </HEAD>

section of your site's HTML code. They do play an important role in getting your pages indexed by the search engine spiders.

Lisa Reviews is also part of the 'do follow' movement, meaning that it won't hurt to leave comments on her blog. So go over and say "Hi!"

Get reviewed

Hire me to review your website, blog, product or service.

Hire Me via PayPerPost Direct!

Only constructive criticisms if any.

Money making secrets revealed for FREE

When I first started this blog, making money was not the objective. Rather I wanted to create a parody site of all those so called online marketing gurus, SEO experts and the like. While searching for ideas, I visited a number of sites and I guess I was converted as well. A lot of the money making tips as well as site optimization techniques did work for me as well and learnt a lot. I soon dropped my initial idea and this blog slowly took shape.

Anyway, one of the websites I regularly frequent is 'Profit Index'. Before you groan "Oh No! Not another money making website," you better check out this site to see what makes it different. It's fairly new and fast gaining popularity.

So what is unique about this site?

Well Jason Hill, the owner of the site is revealing all the money making theories and tips touted in various ebooks for FREE on his site one by one. According to him:

I will do this because I can do this, because I am sick of the thousands of bullshit books and other ways to waste your time and money.

The site also has a blog which is updated regularly. However, the link was on the side bar and not on the top menu, where I feel it should be. Noticed that the link to the "Security Index" page on the top menu is not working. There is a lot of great content but the site could do with some brightening up. Some pictures could help. It's a matter of opinion but in my opinion allowing all visitors to comment freely on the articles instead of limiting it to registered members will go a long way in making the site more interactive.

Thank God! he removed the previous "cash" background. The blog looks less cluttered now. There were a lot of surprises on the site and I learnt quite a number of useful stuff. Go on over to the site and read money making secrets for free.

Best place to buy storage media and printer inks

I remember the good old days when we used to save our data on big (by today's standard) 5.25-inch floppy discs. It's amazing how fast technology has changed. Just four years ago, I was the only one in my entire department with a 128MB flash drive. Now almost everybody has one, some with capacities of up to 4 GB space.

If you are looking for a reliable and cheap source of blank CD/ DVD media products, then I recommend Supermediastore.com. This major reseller and wholesaler of blank media products is based in Southern California. It was established in 2002. According to their site, they were rated as the #1 preferred online store to buy good media with excellent selection, excellent pricing and fast shipping by DigitalFAQ.com.

Besides blank CD DVD media, their online store also sells CD DVD packaging case, computer hardware, memory as well as ink and toner cartridges. Talking about ink, they are now offering a weekly special - 30% Off on all printer inks. They are also offering extra 5% savings on Brother ink (OEM as well as compatible) cartridges.

Sharing files online

If you are using a free email service like I do, I am sure that you are aware of the file size limitations for attachments. So forget about sharing those huge multimedia clips with your friend. This can be really frustrating sometimes when you have to send a big file urgently.

Now, you don't have to worry. I have the perfect solution for you and best of all, it's totally free. I am referring to Driveway's web based online file sharing service.

All you have to do is upload the file (up to a maximum of 500 MB for each upload) and then just send over the 'Parkit' links to your friends or anybody you want to share the document with. You can even post the links up on your blog.

The best and unique feature of this service is that we can edit the shared documents directly on the site. Saves you from all the hassle involved in editing, saving and emailing it back. Yes! The service is multi-user capable. In case you don't want others to edit the file, you can create read only links to send large files as well.

I think you will agree with me when I say that this is a great service.

Heroes fan site

I once read about this popular TV show called Heroes on the net and wondering what it was all about. I first time I caught the show, it was actually the fourth episode and that was it - I was hooked. In case you are not aware, Heroes is the NBC science fiction TV series created by Tim Kring, which follow the lives of people who suddenly discover that they have super powers.

I recently got to know about one of the show's fan sites called "The Real Heroes". The blogger who goes by the alias of Rubixcubeman aims to "find real people with real Hero stories".

He is using the Blogger Minima Dark template and even though I am not a fan of dark backgrounds, I realize that it is a matter of choice. Rubixcubeman should definitely customize the template to make it "his own". A slightly bigger font size would be welcome for those with bad eye sight. It would also be nice to have more than one post on the front page so that we could just scroll down to read older posts instead of clicking the links on the side bar.

Unlike other fan sites, the blog has some great original posts. I now make it a point to read what Rubixcubema has written after every episode of Heroes. If you are a fan of Heroes, you should definitely visit this blog.

Your website SEO score with Website Grader

Got to know about this great SEO tool after I was contacted by Joseph Bamber to have a look at it. I reviewed it some time back but forgot to blog about it.

The Website Grader is a Free SEO tool, which can be used to find out your website's marketing effectiveness. All you have to do is type in your Website URL and hit the submit button.

You can also add 'Related Keywords', 'Competing Websites' and your email. All these are totally optional but I recommend you do so in order to obtain a more useful and detailed report. For example, I put John Chow in the 'Competing Websites' space for comparison purposes.

I used this site for reference and learnt a great deal. First of all I learnt that the WebSite Grade For www.adamok.net is 79/100 (Friday, July 13, 2007). This means that my site scores higher than 79% of the thousands of websites that have previously been submitted to the tool.

It also give me the Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Rank, Google Inbound Links, Yahoo Inbound Links, Delicious Saved Count and Google Indexed Pages. Previously I had to use different tools to tell me all of this.

One new thing I learnt was that my site has a high number of meta keywords. Contrary to what I had always believed, by using a lot of keywords -

it is possible that you are diluting the effect of your most important keywords.

I even received a digg.com submission summary that told me that I have had 10 articles submitted to digg.com from this site. These articles received a total of 26 diggs (votes). Unfortunately, none of these articles have made it to the front page of digg.com.

In order to access more features, you need to register with the site. This tool is amazing. I simply can't believe that it is free. Try it out to see for yourself.

PC and gaming E-commerce site

What genre of video game do you prefer to play? A lot of my friends prefer first shooter and racing games. However, I like role playing and strategy games. Recently got to know about the multi award winning music video game - Guitar Hero. I can't play the guitar very well apart from a few chords but with the guitar hero for PS2, I instantly become a rock star belting out hits like "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple and "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath.

If you like Guitar Hero, check out the range of Guitar Hero controller for PS2 on the CensusPC site.

However, that's not the only stuff that this site carries. They have an amazing range of computers, peripherals and accessories among others. This company was set up by a group of high tech engineers and their HQ is based in California, US. I am looking at upgrading my computer and their Barebone systems are quite attractive and they do ship internationally.

First review on SponsoredReviews.com

Yesterday I took my first opp on Sponsoredreviews.com, another company that offers to connect bloggers to advertisers. It competes directly with PayPerPost and ReviewMe. However, the way it works slightly differs from the others.

After registering with the service and adding your blogs, you find an advertiser you would like to blog about. They have a pay range provided and you then set your bid price. This cannot be more than the price you have set for your blog.

You then wait for the advertiser to accept your offer, refuse it or make a counter offer. If both parties agree, you go ahead and do the review (normally 200 words).

The price cut they take is quite high (35%). So if you take up an opp for $30, I only get $19.50. However, it is a little bit higher than when you take an opp on ReviewMe. The latter takes a massive 50% cut.

While writing this, I got a counter offer to write a review for $5 (my share being $3.25). That's too low for a 200 words review and I counter offered to do it for $10. The initial bid was $15. Let's see what the advertiser says.

Comparison of customer generated advertising companies

I am only going to compare 3 of the services I currently use.

i) PayPerPost: They have the maximum number of advertisers and thus loads of opportunities. Also have the biggest payout. Sometimes upto $1000/. Payperpost also has a referral programme in place. Blogs with a non-writing period of 30+ days in the past 90 days are not eligible to register. Blogs with zero or low PR may have limited opportunities. They also have a very lively community of loyal "posties". I have two of my blogs registered with them with another on the way.

ii) Loudlaunch: Very few opportunities. I have taken a few. However, the fact that most of them require word count of 150 and above with payouts of only $5 has put me off this service.

iii) Creamaid: Like Loudlaunch, very few opportunities. However, I like the fact that you don't have to register your blog with them and can thus post on any including those with zero PR, including this blog. Most opportunities also don't specify a word count. Payouts quite low but a few exceptions like the last opportunity I took ($20).

The clear winner is definitely PayPerPost.

Tags: advertising creamaid loudlaunch payperpost posties