High Tech Marketing Blog

Goodbye PC Magazine.

Yesterday I received the last print edition of PC Magazine, which I had I started reading shortly after it was first published in 1982.

PC Magazine was one of the best places to learn about PCs, software and accessories. They have great articles on technology, user tips, software reviews, etc.

At one point the magazine had over 600 pages. This last issue in my hands has 98.

PC Magazine will still publish in an online version, but I’ll miss the print edition. I feel like I grew up with it.

I wonder if PC Magazine was a victim of its own trend toward covering the general industry, with more articles on cell phones, gadgets, MP3 players and the like along with a trend to commoditization of PC equipment.

I find it interesting that a huge publishing company like Ziff Davis is closing a venerable print edition like PC Mag when individuals like Yanik Silver, Mike Filsaime and Andy Jenkins & Brad Fallon have all successfully introduced print editions of newsletters targeting the online marketing world.

Seems there’s a lot to be said for a tightly focused niche.

What are you going to do with this information right now?

Just read an interesting report on the capture of Saddam Hussein. It was 5 years ago when Saddam was pulled out of a spider hole. You might remember that the US military had come out with a deck of cards ranking the 52 most wanted Iraqi terrorists – with Saddam being the Ace of Spades.

Turns out that while everybody else was looking for all these “cards” they were hoping would lead to Saddam, Staff Sgt Eric Maddox went “long tail”.

He decided to look for and question the body guards and drivers for Saddam and his top aides. To make a long story short (and you can read the long story here) his interrogation of these low level personnel lead him to the farm house where Saddam was hiding.

By thinking slightly out of the box and analyzing the long tail, Maddox reached his goal where hundreds of others had not.

Now think of this in terms of your business. It’s not just about long tail keywords, for which it is extremely relevant, but about many aspects of your business.

Example: What joint venture partners make sense for your business? Let’s say you sell training on how to play a guitar. Sure – you do PPC. And you have lots of competition there. But a more long tail strategy might be to contact music stores and recruit them to be your affiliates. You could even work with their headquarters who may be willing to send an email to everyone who buys a guitar from them. Now that would be an “Ace of Spades” score for your business.

Long tail creative thinking worked for Maddox in finding the #1 fugitive in the world. It can work for your business, too.

Please share your thoughts on this by posting a comment below.

I downloaded Jeff Johnson’s Free SEO blog software and followed his instructions.

In less than 10 days I had the number 3 spot in Google for my keyword phrase as you will see in this video.

If you are at all interested in getting free SEO traffic from blogs, you should really get this free software and just follow the step-by-step instructions.

Download free SEO blog software.

Edit 12/6: Free software not currently available, but the pro version is now for sale.

What's your opinion on this?

I received an email from Google telling me I had a Google Alert and needed to lot into my account to read it. But as you see in this video, it was not really Google. These criminals were trying to get me to supply them with my login and password so they could take over my Google AdWords or AdSense account. From there, they can change payment information, run ads on my budget supporting their products, etc. Beware – and always look for the real URL. In any email like this, if they tell you to log into your account, go directly to your browser and enter the URL of the account. Don’t click on the email unless you are 100% sure.

Leave me a comment below to share your thoughts with me.

Download free WordPress SEO Blog software here.

Wondering what one of these blogs looks like? Here’s a model rocket books blog I just made with this free software.

Amazon has released a public beta of a new service called CloudFront. It works with their Amazon S3 service to distribute web content geographically so that your files are closer to your visitors.

I think this may be the solution to the server meltdowns we have seen or experienced first-hand during big product launches. I know several big-name marketers who have had server issues recently. These aren’t rookies. They’ve bought multiple servers to handle the anticipated load, but had big problems anyway. It’s a tough challenge.

With CloudFront, your files are hosted on the massive Amazon network. In the US alone there are eight geographically disbursed “edge” locations. If your web page starts getting lots of requests, as it will during a big launch, CloudFront takes your files from the S3 server and pushes them out to its edge servers in these eight locations. This means there is less “travel time” for the files to get to the visitor, and that the demand is shared among those server locations.

Result? Your sales page stays up and orders keep coming in.

What kind of capacity can it handle?

From the web site: “By default, your distributions support peak data transfer speeds of 1,000 megabits per second and peak request rates of 1,000 requests per second. If you expect more than this amount of traffic, please request a higher limit here. ”

Pricing is based on what you use – not upfront fees or monthly charges.

http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/

Anyone else have feelings about this?

Got this idea from Mike Filsaime. Simple but effective. If you want to build a following on Twitter, register a domain name for it. Example: I registered http://TwitterMulligan.com

In your host control panel, simply forward this domain to your own twitter link. This works especially well if you were unable to get your desired name when you registered at Twitter.

You can put this in your email footers, email confirm pages, blog pages, etc.

Leave me a comment below to share your thoughts with me.

If you have photos of people on your sales or opt-in pages, look at their eyes. I just saw a very interesting eye-tracking study which showed that where the model is looking dramatically affected a reader’s attention on the headline.

The short take-away is: get a photo of the model so it looks like they are looking at your headline, NOT at the reader.

What about you? What do you think?

ClickBank has started a video tutorial channel on YouTube. Their goal is to release videos that help ClickBank users get the most from their service. Visit ClickBank on YouTube.

Let's talk more about this... can you do me a quick 30-second favor and leave a comment below?

First, understand that I haven’t even seen it yet. But plenty of other people are piping up about it, so I will, too. Here is my Google phone review featuring 5 things wrong: (Note that I have no basis in fact for any of this, but most reviewers have no facts yet either.)

1. Changes all cookies from rightful affiliate to someone named “moneybrin”

2. 3G coverage should enable quicker downloads of poorly translated sales pages for get rich quick schemes.

3. Google captures all phone conversations, converts to text, publishes on the web and inserts AdSense ads. Problem? No revenue share.

4. Hidden Google App finds unsecured WiFi connections and immediately logs into online bank and investment accounts of nearby homes, downloads net worth, and sells this to insurance companies, credit card companies and enhancement companies.

5. AdSensitivity “feature” automatically clicks 2-3 AdSense ads at the same time, which customer blames on their own fat fingers. Instant tripling of Google AdWords revenue.

Have you found anything I missed?

Let's talk more about this... can you do me a quick 30-second favor and leave a comment below?