The Media Supermarket

And a wish very elegantly expressed in the visual. Still without being vulgar and suggestive. The same link of the color, and focus on what the customer wants is clear here.
On the bottom, a translation is also provided; “yellow for flat”. This is for greasy hair that needs volume.
It’s a series of similar nice ads using the same techniques and making clear differentiation in colors, and playing smartly on the obvious, but not so express desires of the target audience.

via: Ads of the World

How relevant can an ad be? This ad is great because it clearly plays on many women’s desire; to stuff their bras with more… stuff!
Another reason why this ad is great, is that the main focus, and the largest part of the visual is about what the consumer wants, and not a huge logo or product image. You can hardly see the name of Sunsilk on the bottle, but you sure recognize the brand, you immediately understand the meaning of that color of bottle (it is for poofy hair), as opposed to other vairants, and its a hilarious way of linking the two concepts together…
via: Ads of the World 

Although strongly facilitated by computers and the Web, crowdsourcing has been used in other fields without the use of the Internet. Of course it is a lot easier and much more efficient, but I would like to highlight a system that beautifully and naturally utilized this approach.
That system is calligraphy.
When was a new style of calligraphy invented? Who invented it? We only know the period, and a group of people who were active in creating that style. There are the big influential calligraphers, and the other ones with small contributions. The “source code” of calligraphy is contained within the letter itself. The length and height of a letter is determined by a certain number of dots above or beside each other. Popular opinion and taste are what determine which improvement is to be adopted, and with time, a certain style evolves. Who created it?
The Crowd…

I recently started working on a project for online music sharing, uploading, and community building. Several different directions presented themselves so far.
Creating a huge database of rare and very-har-to-find music collection is one of these, and I got to know one serious enthusiast working in this direction like crazy.
Another idea, by Tareq, was to announce to singers from wherever, to record a song, and we can then record them singing and upload the video clip on our website. This way, they can have a recorded video of their song, distributed to a huge number of people, who will then vote for their favorite song / singer. Another idea is to provide users with software that allows them to edit tracks and songs as they like.
I then came across a bold initiative working on promoting singers through the web. They have a descriptive title and slogan, SingToWin.com your free road to fame.
Their model is focusing on unheard of singers who are bold enough to record their voice in any format.
The site is functioning but the launch is scheduled sometime this month. This is a clear implementation of the Rady-Fire-Aim approach; they have something to start with (eight songs!) and they are probably working on the tweaking, improvements, and development. The design is quite simple and intuitive, and can use the services of a professional designer!
The lesson for me…? Immediately start with whatever I have and fine-tune from there.

I have some doubts about the audience and whether or not they would really understand the subtle message in this ad. How many people actually use Ctrl-Z instead of clicking on the “undo” button? How many women over the age of forty are that familiar with the keyboard, and will understand the message?

Crowdsourcing is another example of leveraging the long tail. Many people contribute with insignificant improvements on the same idea. But the combined total of these contributions make a really considerable difference.

I made it clear to myself from the beginning that this will be a business blog, with a commercial side to it. At the same time, it is not intended solely for selling products and services. I really enjoy writing and sharing my experiences and thoughts with people. Since the main topics discussed here are related to business, I might as well apply them and gain some experience in making money through this new medium.
It’s been a bit more than a quarter since this blog has started, and I want to participate in Shai Coggins’ $100 challenge, to share the results and experience.
I’m using a variety of techniques and revenue streams to monetize the blog. Right now, I’m in the stage of experimenting with different methods, and looking for the best way to utilize each.
Monetization efforts range from totally passive income techniques, to techniques that get offline connections and result in business transactions. Therefore, I’ll group my methods to three groups: passive income, cost-per-action methods, and marketing methods that bring prospective clients.

Passive Income:The type of program that rewards me whenever a user clicks on an ad, without me having to convince the reader of anything, hence the name.

• Google Adsense:The ad system that pays bloggers for each click a user clicks on any of their ads. All I have to do is find how out to attract (and keep) visitors, and hopefully they will find the ads relevant for them, click on them, to result in money paid for me.
• Bidvertiser: The same system, but with a different network of adverisers.
• Kontera: Also pays per click, but in a different way. Their ads are the highlighted and underlined with double orange line. They also depend on context. If you hover over any of these orange link, a box with information appears. I get paid if you click on them. I just discovered they have new really cool formats, ranging from simple text, to pictures, video and flash. I’m going to start testing them.
  $0.78 was generated so far from these systems.

Cost per action (sale) systems: The ones that reward me if and only if the reader takes a certain type of action, buying a product for example. They are also called affiliate programs.

• Toolbars: Halfway between passive income and CPA, are toolbars. I create the toolbars, and hope to promote them as much as possible. I am rewarded the more people download and use them. I have already made my first $100 through Conduit, but it’s only redeemable when I reach the $250 level. Agloco is another system, where everyone who installs it gets to share the profits. This toolbar is supposed be released sometime during March ‘07.
• Auction Ads: These are eBay auctions featured on my site. I get to keep the profit made out of the sales if one of my readers makes a purchase through my blog.
• Text Link Ads: It’s an affiliate program, where if you sign up through my site and get accepted, I am rewarded.

Cost per (my) action: Programs that pay me for an action on my side, for example writing a post and / or linking to a certain site. PayPerPost and Blogsvertise are the two systems I am working with right now. I am still experimenting with these two systems, and already wrote two posts, one for each. I’m supposed to be paid $15 for these two posts. Blogitive is another similar system for which I applied. I was asked to make some changes, which I did, and hope for acceptance soon.

Marketing for prospective clients: I’m working on promoting my toolbars, The Middle East Media Guide, Mediadisk, and my services as a copywriter and translator. I got an offer to work with Textappeal, a company that works on providing advertisers with messages translated while taking into consideration the cultural implications of the target audience. More importantly, this blog was responsible for getting me an offer to work with the biggest Arab online community, which I gladly accepted:)

This is how my first quarter looked like. I think the results are great, and got me to really unexpected places and people, which I would never have found. My financial goals are mugh higher than this, and I’m constantly looking for more ways of providing value and quality content. More important to me, is growing, learning, and connecting with more and more people of similar interests.

The classical cycle of advertising starts by first researching what your customers want. You collect data, and you spot trends. Then you research (or guess) to where these people are paying attention; what media they are watching, what events they are attending, and what streets they are passing through.
Other forms of advertising exist of course, but I will not get into them here.
In this model, you try to be where the customer is, you try to present them with a message that you hope they are looking for, and you try to answer questions you assume are in their minds.
With the Web and with search engines, this model is facing some limitations. Now, people have a “place” through which they can search for whatever they want whenever they want.
When I open the TV, I want to watch a certain program, I don’t want to see anybody’s irrelevant advertisement. When I go to a concert, I don’t care who sponsored the singer’s flight, I just want to enjoy the event.
BUT… When I’m about to plan for my holiday, I actually want to know which companies have the best deal.
This is one of the very rare instants in which you can target your advertising only to the people who are willing to receive your information.
This is how “search marketing” started to evolve. Smart companies started to know the importance of being listed high on search engine result, and the amount of traffic it brings to their websites. Enter SEO (search engine optimization).
This field aims at having your company listed at the top of search results for the keywords related to the products/services you offer. This is done by researching what people are searching for, how they might view your product, and most importantly how search engines work.
This involves both technical and marketing knowledge, and it is both, an art and a science. When internet marketers discovered this in the late 90’s, they started manipulating search engines with certain unsavory techniques that would list their pages at the top of search results. Many of these pages were meaningless, full of irrelevant content that was just designed to attract users to the page. And since these sites had advertisements on them, they would make money just because many people viewed those ads. Of course the ads were irrelevant, and the users dissatisfied. This is one of the reasons that industry crashed.
Now, since search engines are much more sophisticated, and can detect these techniques, webmasters are trying to improve their content as much as possible, and trying to implement legitimate techniques that would rank them high on search results. Eventually, I hope, the most relevant and highest quality content should be rewarded by being at the top. However, the Web is made by humans, for humans. There will always be the human factor, and we will always need to market. This makes it more and more interesting. SEO is there to stay.
You can familiarize yourself with the basic terms of this industry by referring to this SEO glossary.
Many other resources exist in this field.

Discountclick is provider of this service and even have an affiliate program, with a generous 20% commission on all sales generated through any publisher.
My favorite SEO tools site is seochat. Check the left sidebar and try them, they can give you a great idea bout these concepts and help you understand your site or blog. To help you understand how search engines read your site, try the spider simulator, which shows exactly how sites are indexed.
Since I’m interested in many things in life, these fields are really exciting for me. They allow, force, and help me to learn more and more of everything, and keep my mind connecting stuff together.

PayPerPost, the service that links advertiser with bloggers, is announcing some new stuff in the coming weeks, or maybe more.
While trying to guess what it is exactly they will be offering, several options came up.
One of their current projects is developing a new badge for their new affiliate program. This is done through a vote for around forty different affiliate badges. It’s cool to have the community of their users participate in collectively deciding which badge is to be used.
Although an affiliate program does exist to attract new bloggers, there might be some changes on this program since they are remaking the badges.
Still, although that is the obvious and logical option in my mind, I have a feeling that there is something bigger.
I expect the timing of this new thing to be at the beginning of next June. The perfect timing to announce the new stuff, would be during their Postiecon. The opportunity to blog about this new stuff of theirs is available up to the 25th of April. After that, search engines will need three to four weeks to index all these posts, with some more time to create some great buzz. By the beginning of June, some good buzz will have been created, and it will be perfect to make the announcement during the Posties event.
I hope they diversify their offering instead of just upgrading their existing stuff. It would be great if they make a feature that can increase my site’s traffic.
What I really like about PPP, is that we get paid for our writing, and not just for having a banner ad. Of course you have to have a high PageRank and a good Alexa rank for the high paying opportunities. I also enjoy researching relevant and cool products on the Web, and I like sharing it with others. Stay tuned for PPP’s new stuff. 

A very creative and descriptive name for a service I recently got to know about. I also signed up and look forward to participate in their program. It is a program that pays bloggers to post their ideas about advertisers’ products or sites. 
What was really interesting and different about them, is that they don’t have rigid rules for discussing the featured products.

“You do not have to necessarily endorse the advertiser’s website products or services, just mention them in your blog. You can relate to in your own life, review the site, compliment or even complain about it, it is entirely up to you.”

But their strategy seems to be based on links, since they require no less than three links pointing to the website reviewed, which is mainly aimed at generating traffic, and more importantly improve the rank of that site. I read on the JustMakeMoneyOnline Blog that they are also promoting a new innovative advertising service for bloggers based on video ads.
It’s very easy to register for this service, and they alert bloggers for the available tasks in which they can participate.