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How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

2017-05-22T16:29:00.001-07:00

#Tags

Matt Southern

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

In the days of Facebook promoted posts and Google AdWords, the instant gratification of shelling out a few bucks for immediate traffic is highly appealing. But it's not sustainable. You'll get traffic now, but what happens when you stop paying? Will your content ever be found again?

Organic traffic means the content you put on your website today will drive traffic tomorrow, next month, next year, and probably even several years from now. That's why it's worth the effort. You don't see that kind of ROI from paid traffic.

When it comes to getting more organic traffic there are good ways and there are better ways. There are also some downright awful ways that should be avoided at all costs. I will touch on all of these in more detail. If you're ready to put the work in and increase your organic traffic the right way, these are the things you need to start doing.

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Creating content for the sake of creating content, because you heard publishing regular articles is good for SEO, won't get you very far. It fact it may even cause a lot of damage to your reputation.

Your website is a representation of your business. In a lot of cases it's the first impression a potential customer may have of your business.

Just as you wouldn't deliver a sub-par product or service you shouldn't be publishing low quality blog posts. It's not unreasonable to suggest you should write the best content you possibly can every time you publish something.

I'm a big fan of Scott Stratten (author of UnMarketing) because he never seems to say anything that I disagree with. Here's a great quote from his podcast about blogging that relates to this point:

Me demanding the best content you can write should not be intimidating, it should not be paralyzing. It should be the minimum that when you write something you look at it and go: "Yes! That's what I wanted to say!"

Here’s the clip, which I strongly encourage watching:

UnPodcast Episode 22: You Shouldn't Blog When

http://youtu.be/I2taWYnt82M?t=30m35s

What does this have to do with increasing organic traffic?

Well it just so happens that search engines are almost as good as people at being able to tell when you're phoning in your content. Great quality content ranks better, which in turn drives more organic traffic. It's also the kind of content people will want to like to in their blogs and share with other people.

So give it everything you've got before hitting the 'Publish' button.

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

For example, if you're an SEO agency don't bother trying to rank for the term "SEO agency." Chances are you'll never knock out the heavyweights that already rank for that term. Instead, narrow it down a bit more. Be more specific by including the area you serve. For example: "SEO agency in Albuquerque NM".

You could get even more specific by narrowing it down to customer base. Is there a specific group of clients you tend to serve? Try including that in your long-tail key phrase. For example: "SEO agency for non-profits in Albuquerque NM." That's a key phrase you're a lot more likely to rank for. Not to mention it will also attract way more targeted, organic traffic than a broad key phrase like "SEO agency."

Long-tail key phrases more closely resemble what an actual user would type into a search engine. As users perform searches more like they would verbalize a question, studies have shown long-tail key phrases are driving results due to greater relevancy and less competition.

Write Consistently

Try not to get too caught up in what certain studies will tell you are the best days and times to publish a blog post. Just try to be consistent.

Aim for once a week at minimum. Ideally the more the better, but if you're running a business at the same time it's difficult to publish more often than that without hiring writers.

Search engines love frequently updated sites. But more important than that, users do. A site that's updated consistently tells users you're serious about providing good content, which makes it worth it for them to invest their time into reading it.

Consistent updates keep people coming back, which keeps them sharing your content, linking to it, and telling others about it. These are all signals that help boost organic traffic.

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

As Matt Cutts has said, guest blogging for SEO is dead. It's done. Don't do it. Don't even think about it.

It also has the value of the traffic that comes from being published on a high authority site. Having said that, there are some best practices to keep in mind when guest posting:

Don't spread yourself too thin. Aim for authoritative websites with high quality content and decent traffic numbers.
Guest blog on websites within your own niche. Guest posting on a popular websites means little if you're not reaching your ideal audience.
Promote your guest posts as you would your own posts. This shows the other website you really value the opportunity to post on their blog.
Check back regularly and respond to comments. Ideally you want their visitors to become your visitors. Responding to comments is a great way to get that relationship started.

Speaking of Matt Cutts and Google, this leads me to my next point...

Don't Anger Google

Making Google angry is like biting the hand that feeds you. Unfortunately some SEOs still like to test the limits of what they can and can't get away with. Increasing organic traffic should always be done ethically, or you will get hit with a Google penalty sooner or later.

Here are some tips for avoiding those penalties:

Don't build cheap links.
Don't ever, ever pay for inbound links.
Don't use exact-match anchor text.
Don't publish low quality, scraped, or stolen content.
Do publish awesome content that's helpful to users.

Like I said at the beginning, building organic traffic is hard. Anything that promises a shortcut to an avalanche of traffic will more than likely lead to a penalty down the road. Embrace the daily grind of creating great content that helps users and provides a solution to what they're looking for. In the end that will drive more organic traffic than any shortcut ever will.

Conclusion

If you have any thoughts or questions about building organic traffic, or would like to agree/disagree with anything I wrote, please leave a comment! I just joined the Positionly team and I'd love to get to know the community here a bit better.

WRITTEN BY

Matt Southern

Freelance Writer at MattSouthern.com

Matt Southern is a freelance writer and SEO professional based in Ontario, Canada. His passion for helping people in all aspects of online marketing flows through in the expert articles he contributes to many well respected publications across the web.

COMMENTS (20)

Ruth Anitha(11 months ago)Reply

Backlinks are basically Authoritative linking. Which means someone else says about your site that it is in an indication of a particular keyword or you have authority in a particular market is indicating that their readers can go and find more helpful information from certain places on the web and they do that by creating these authoritative links which also called backlinks. The more of high quality, authoritative links that you have, Google considers this as you are being incredible in the market. Your website can be authoritative by having other website owners to link to your website, Then Search Engine algorithm will consider your site and you will get higher boost to your SEO and your site will likely get higher ranking and the more of this authoritative link. Blog Commenting is a great way to get backlinks to your website. Step 1. Find relevant and high traffic blog in your niche. Step 2. Actually read the post, what all it’s about. Step 3. Just leave relevant comment to the topic, then simply place your link in the comment.

Vicky(11 months ago)Reply

Hey, Matt! Thank you for your sharing, and I learned much from it, but I still have a question. We began to do SEO work for our site 2 years ago, and our organic traffic grew 5 times ( from 8K to 40K every day). But two years later, it is very difficult to get it grow more, even it drop to 3.2K every day. So can you give me any advice to make our site's traffic grow again? Thank you in advance!

John(1 year ago)Reply

Indeed a great post about website traffic. Nowadays It is very much hard for a blogger to drive targeted traffic to their website and without having targeted traffic, We can never drive customer and sales. Getting website traffic is the most important thing for any website. To have high website traffic, We must have to write high quality content which is very much important to hold the readers on our website for long period of time. We have to write engagging content which can help readers. I am glad that You can covered an amazing article on website traffic. Will definitely follow what you said in this article. Thanks for sharing it with us. :D http://www.loudestdeals.com/siteground-coupon-discount/

Ruth Anitha(1 year ago)Reply

The only thing people hate more than a slow site is a fast site that gives them nothing. All your content is filtered for each different site so that it looks like real content and it looks good for the readers of your content. http://www.webfire.com/free-training

Dave Donahue(1 year ago)Reply

This is a cool post on how to gain organic traffic. I knew that creating quality content is key so I'll keep doing what I'm doing!

Kenny(1 year ago)Reply

This article really very useful and informative, thanks for sharing with us.

Nathan Brook(1 year ago)Reply

What a great post. Thanks a lot for the insightful ideas. I am definitely going to make sure I implement all of them to bring traffic to my site.

IT consulting(1 year ago)Reply

Simply great and agree with your all subject...! I like the way you explained. Each heading are awesome Create the best quality content and consistently, Long tail keyword is better, Guest blog for SEO is dead, and Aha....Do not anger Google. conclusion is awesome. Hard work and Patient is best practice to see the good results in any field. Really useful and helpful post indeed. Thank you.

Whizkevina(1 year ago)Reply

Good and Very Helpful Information! @Matt. Can i guest post here. Reply to me with my email.

SSCSWORLD(1 year ago)Reply

Great information! All these strategies will surely help to drive traffic. Thanks a lot. http://www.sscsworld.com

Rahul Jain(1 year ago)Reply

hahaha... information with entertainment.. i like the way you write.

Andrew Dubinsky(1 year ago)Reply

You're correct about this - "Building organic traffic is the hardest work you’ll ever put in to your website." Simple, but not easy.

antonio rodriguez(1 year ago)Reply

That was a great post.alot of really good content.i appreciate your time and your quality of thinking

ferhan(1 year ago)Reply

Thank you for another informative website. The place else could I get that type of info written in such a perfect means? I’ve a undertaking that I am just now operating on, and I have been at the glance out for such information.

Windows(1 year ago)Reply

Hi, every time i used to check webpage posts here early in the dawn, because i love to find out more and more

khizer hayat(1 year ago)Reply

Nice work admin so well written. I really like it Thank you.

aisha(1 year ago)Reply

hello!, I like your writing so much! proportion we be in contact more about your article on AOL? I require an expert in this space to resolve my problem. Maybe that is you! Having a look forward to peer you.truly this post is totally complete and very informative, keep it up the sha\ear difference type of post.. thanks for sharing!!

Ranvir(1 year ago)Reply

Nice post. I liked the way you explained the things. I feel that good content is the key for everything. Thanks again for writing such a good post.

Yogopa ltd(1 year ago)Reply

Nice Topic and i like about Don’t Anger Google tips thanks for sharing.

Kasia Perzyńska(1 year ago)Reply

Hey there :-) you are welcome! Have a nice day!

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website

Blog SEO and Inbound Marketing Tactics

Go to Unamo

#Tags

Filter by Tags:

Matt Southern

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

Featured

Matt Southern

If anyone tries to tell you building organic traffic is easy, don't listen to them. If you're looking for a quick fix, I'm afraid you're not going to find it here. Building organic traffic is the hardest work you'll ever put in to your website. With that being said, it's also the greatest investment of time and effort you can make.
In the days of Facebook promoted posts and Google AdWords, the instant gratification of shelling out a few bucks for immediate traffic is highly appealing. But it's not sustainable. You'll get traffic now, but what happens when you stop paying? Will your content ever be found again?
Organic traffic means the content you put on your website today will drive traffic tomorrow, next month, next year, and probably even several years from now. That's why it's worth the effort. You don't see that kind of ROI from paid traffic.
When it comes to getting more organic traffic there are good ways and there are better ways. There are also some downright awful ways that should be avoided at all costs. I will touch on all of these in more detail. If you're ready to put the work in and increase your organic traffic the right way, these are the things you need to start doing.

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Creating content for the sake of creating content, because you heard publishing regular articles is good for SEO, won't get you very far. It fact it may even cause a lot of damage to your reputation.
Your website is a representation of your business. In a lot of cases it's the first impression a potential customer may have of your business.
Just as you wouldn't deliver a sub-par product or service you shouldn't be publishing low quality blog posts. It's not unreasonable to suggest you should write the best content you possibly can every time you publish something.
I'm a big fan of Scott Stratten (author of UnMarketing) because he never seems to say anything that I disagree with. Here's a great quote from his podcast about blogging that relates to this point:

Me demanding the best content you can write should not be intimidating, it should not be paralyzing. It should be the minimum that when you write something you look at it and go: "Yes! That's what I wanted to say!"

Here’s the clip, which I strongly encourage watching:
UnPodcast Episode 22: You Shouldn't Blog When
http://youtu.be/I2taWYnt82M?t=30m35s
What does this have to do with increasing organic traffic?
Well it just so happens that search engines are almost as good as people at being able to tell when you're phoning in your content. Great quality content ranks better, which in turn drives more organic traffic. It's also the kind of content people will want to like to in their blogs and share with other people.
So give it everything you've got before hitting the 'Publish' button.

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Everyone wants to rank for those broad two or three word key phrases because they tend to have high search volumes. The problem with these broad key phrases is they are highly competitive. So competitive that you may not stand a chance of ranking for them unless you devote months of your time to it. Instead of spending your time going after something that may not even be attainable, go after the low-hanging fruit of long-tail key phrases.
For example, if you're an SEO agency don't bother trying to rank for the term "SEO agency." Chances are you'll never knock out the heavyweights that already rank for that term. Instead, narrow it down a bit more. Be more specific by including the area you serve. For example: "SEO agency in Albuquerque NM".
You could get even more specific by narrowing it down to customer base. Is there a specific group of clients you tend to serve? Try including that in your long-tail key phrase. For example: "SEO agency for non-profits in Albuquerque NM." That's a key phrase you're a lot more likely to rank for. Not to mention it will also attract way more targeted, organic traffic than a broad key phrase like "SEO agency."
Long-tail key phrases more closely resemble what an actual user would type into a search engine. As users perform searches more like they would verbalize a question, studies have shown long-tail key phrases are driving results due to greater relevancy and less competition.

Write Consistently

Try not to get too caught up in what certain studies will tell you are the best days and times to publish a blog post. Just try to be consistent.
Aim for once a week at minimum. Ideally the more the better, but if you're running a business at the same time it's difficult to publish more often than that without hiring writers.
Search engines love frequently updated sites. But more important than that, users do. A site that's updated consistently tells users you're serious about providing good content, which makes it worth it for them to invest their time into reading it.
Consistent updates keep people coming back, which keeps them sharing your content, linking to it, and telling others about it. These are all signals that help boost organic traffic.

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

As Matt Cutts has said, guest blogging for SEO is dead. It's done. Don't do it. Don't even think about it.

Guest blogging purely for inbound links is a flawed strategy because the value of those links are going down. However, guest blogging for traffic is still an incredibly viable strategy. While that inbound link you get at the end of a guest post doesn't have as much SEO value as it used to, it still has the value of exposing your content to a new audience.
It also has the value of the traffic that comes from being published on a high authority site. Having said that, there are some best practices to keep in mind when guest posting:

Don't spread yourself too thin. Aim for authoritative websites with high quality content and decent traffic numbers.
Guest blog on websites within your own niche. Guest posting on a popular websites means little if you're not reaching your ideal audience.
Promote your guest posts as you would your own posts. This shows the other website you really value the opportunity to post on their blog.
Check back regularly and respond to comments. Ideally you want their visitors to become your visitors. Responding to comments is a great way to get that relationship started.

Speaking of Matt Cutts and Google, this leads me to my next point...

Don't Anger Google

Don't build cheap links.
Don't ever, ever pay for inbound links.
Don't use exact-match anchor text.
Don't publish low quality, scraped, or stolen content.
Do publish awesome content that's helpful to users.

Conclusion

I've always been a believer that hard work gets the best results, and in practice it always ends up being true. On the web it's no different. If you want more organic traffic, you have to work for it. That means giving your best effort every time, going after opportunities your competitors have missed, being consistent, guest blogging strategically, and staying on Google's good side.
If you have any thoughts or questions about building organic traffic, or would like to agree/disagree with anything I wrote, please leave a comment! I just joined the Positionly team and I'd love to get to know the community here a bit better.

Written by

Matt Southern

Freelance Writer at MattSouthern.com

Comments (20)

Ruth Anitha (11 months ago) Reply

Vicky (11 months ago) Reply

John (1 year ago) Reply

Ruth Anitha (1 year ago) Reply

Dave Donahue (1 year ago) Reply

This is a cool post on how to gain organic traffic. I knew that creating quality content is key so I'll keep doing what I'm doing!

Kenny (1 year ago) Reply

This article really very useful and informative, thanks for sharing with us.

Nathan Brook (1 year ago) Reply

What a great post. Thanks a lot for the insightful ideas. I am definitely going to make sure I implement all of them to bring traffic to my site.

IT consulting (1 year ago) Reply

Whizkevina (1 year ago) Reply

Good and Very Helpful Information! @Matt. Can i guest post here. Reply to me with my email.

SSCSWORLD (1 year ago) Reply

Great information! All these strategies will surely help to drive traffic. Thanks a lot. http://www.sscsworld.com

Rahul Jain (1 year ago) Reply

hahaha... information with entertainment.. i like the way you write.

Andrew Dubinsky (1 year ago) Reply

You're correct about this - "Building organic traffic is the hardest work you’ll ever put in to your website." Simple, but not easy.

antonio rodriguez (1 year ago) Reply

That was a great post.alot of really good content.i appreciate your time and your quality of thinking

ferhan (1 year ago) Reply

Windows (1 year ago) Reply

Hi, every time i used to check webpage posts here early in the dawn, because i love to find out more and more

khizer hayat (1 year ago) Reply

Nice work admin so well written. I really like it Thank you.

aisha (1 year ago) Reply

Ranvir (1 year ago) Reply

Nice post. I liked the way you explained the things. I feel that good content is the key for everything. Thanks again for writing such a good post.

Yogopa ltd (1 year ago) Reply

Nice Topic and i like about Don’t Anger Google tips thanks for sharing.

Kasia Perzyńska (1 year ago) Reply

Hey there :-) you are welcome! Have a nice day!

Seasonal Marketing: How to Apply It to Your Business

Joydeep Bhattacharya

5mins left

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

2017-05-22T16:25:00.005-07:00

#Tags

Matt Southern

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Creating content for the sake of creating content, because you heard publishing regular articles is good for SEO, won't get you very far. It fact it may even cause a lot of damage to your reputation.

Your website is a representation of your business. In a lot of cases it's the first impression a potential customer may have of your business.

I'm a big fan of Scott Stratten (author of UnMarketing) because he never seems to say anything that I disagree with. Here's a great quote from his podcast about blogging that relates to this point:

Me demanding the best content you can write should not be intimidating, it should not be paralyzing. It should be the minimum that when you write something you look at it and go: "Yes! That's what I wanted to say!"

Here’s the clip, which I strongly encourage watching:

UnPodcast Episode 22: You Shouldn't Blog When

http://youtu.be/I2taWYnt82M?t=30m35s

What does this have to do with increasing organic traffic?

So give it everything you've got before hitting the 'Publish' button.

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Write Consistently

Try not to get too caught up in what certain studies will tell you are the best days and times to publish a blog post. Just try to be consistent.

Aim for once a week at minimum. Ideally the more the better, but if you're running a business at the same time it's difficult to publish more often than that without hiring writers.

Consistent updates keep people coming back, which keeps them sharing your content, linking to it, and telling others about it. These are all signals that help boost organic traffic.

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

As Matt Cutts has said, guest blogging for SEO is dead. It's done. Don't do it. Don't even think about it.

It also has the value of the traffic that comes from being published on a high authority site. Having said that, there are some best practices to keep in mind when guest posting:

Don't spread yourself too thin. Aim for authoritative websites with high quality content and decent traffic numbers.
Guest blog on websites within your own niche. Guest posting on a popular websites means little if you're not reaching your ideal audience.
Promote your guest posts as you would your own posts. This shows the other website you really value the opportunity to post on their blog.
Check back regularly and respond to comments. Ideally you want their visitors to become your visitors. Responding to comments is a great way to get that relationship started.

Speaking of Matt Cutts and Google, this leads me to my next point...

Don't Anger Google

Here are some tips for avoiding those penalties:

Don't build cheap links.
Don't ever, ever pay for inbound links.
Don't use exact-match anchor text.
Don't publish low quality, scraped, or stolen content.
Do publish awesome content that's helpful to users.

Conclusion

WRITTEN BY

Matt Southern

Freelance Writer at MattSouthern.com

COMMENTS (20)

Ruth Anitha(11 months ago)Reply

Vicky(11 months ago)Reply

John(1 year ago)Reply

Ruth Anitha(1 year ago)Reply

Dave Donahue(1 year ago)Reply

This is a cool post on how to gain organic traffic. I knew that creating quality content is key so I'll keep doing what I'm doing!

Kenny(1 year ago)Reply

This article really very useful and informative, thanks for sharing with us.

Nathan Brook(1 year ago)Reply

What a great post. Thanks a lot for the insightful ideas. I am definitely going to make sure I implement all of them to bring traffic to my site.

IT consulting(1 year ago)Reply

Whizkevina(1 year ago)Reply

Good and Very Helpful Information! @Matt. Can i guest post here. Reply to me with my email.

SSCSWORLD(1 year ago)Reply

Great information! All these strategies will surely help to drive traffic. Thanks a lot. http://www.sscsworld.com

Rahul Jain(1 year ago)Reply

hahaha... information with entertainment.. i like the way you write.

Andrew Dubinsky(1 year ago)Reply

You're correct about this - "Building organic traffic is the hardest work you’ll ever put in to your website." Simple, but not easy.

antonio rodriguez(1 year ago)Reply

That was a great post.alot of really good content.i appreciate your time and your quality of thinking

ferhan(1 year ago)Reply

Windows(1 year ago)Reply

Hi, every time i used to check webpage posts here early in the dawn, because i love to find out more and more

khizer hayat(1 year ago)Reply

Nice work admin so well written. I really like it Thank you.

aisha(1 year ago)Reply

Ranvir(1 year ago)Reply

Nice post. I liked the way you explained the things. I feel that good content is the key for everything. Thanks again for writing such a good post.

Yogopa ltd(1 year ago)Reply

Nice Topic and i like about Don’t Anger Google tips thanks for sharing.

Kasia Perzyńska(1 year ago)Reply

Hey there :-) you are welcome! Have a nice day!

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website

Blog SEO and Inbound Marketing Tactics

Go to Unamo

#Tags

Filter by Tags:

Matt Southern

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

Featured

Matt Southern

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Me demanding the best content you can write should not be intimidating, it should not be paralyzing. It should be the minimum that when you write something you look at it and go: "Yes! That's what I wanted to say!"

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Write Consistently

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

As Matt Cutts has said, guest blogging for SEO is dead. It's done. Don't do it. Don't even think about it.

Don't spread yourself too thin. Aim for authoritative websites with high quality content and decent traffic numbers.
Guest blog on websites within your own niche. Guest posting on a popular websites means little if you're not reaching your ideal audience.
Promote your guest posts as you would your own posts. This shows the other website you really value the opportunity to post on their blog.
Check back regularly and respond to comments. Ideally you want their visitors to become your visitors. Responding to comments is a great way to get that relationship started.

Speaking of Matt Cutts and Google, this leads me to my next point...

Don't Anger Google

Don't build cheap links.
Don't ever, ever pay for inbound links.
Don't use exact-match anchor text.
Don't publish low quality, scraped, or stolen content.
Do publish awesome content that's helpful to users.

Conclusion

Written by

Matt Southern

Freelance Writer at MattSouthern.com

Comments (20)

Ruth Anitha (11 months ago) Reply

Vicky (11 months ago) Reply

John (1 year ago) Reply

Ruth Anitha (1 year ago) Reply

Dave Donahue (1 year ago) Reply

This is a cool post on how to gain organic traffic. I knew that creating quality content is key so I'll keep doing what I'm doing!

Kenny (1 year ago) Reply

This article really very useful and informative, thanks for sharing with us.

Nathan Brook (1 year ago) Reply

What a great post. Thanks a lot for the insightful ideas. I am definitely going to make sure I implement all of them to bring traffic to my site.

IT consulting (1 year ago) Reply

Whizkevina (1 year ago) Reply

Good and Very Helpful Information! @Matt. Can i guest post here. Reply to me with my email.

SSCSWORLD (1 year ago) Reply

Great information! All these strategies will surely help to drive traffic. Thanks a lot. http://www.sscsworld.com

Rahul Jain (1 year ago) Reply

hahaha... information with entertainment.. i like the way you write.

Andrew Dubinsky (1 year ago) Reply

You're correct about this - "Building organic traffic is the hardest work you’ll ever put in to your website." Simple, but not easy.

antonio rodriguez (1 year ago) Reply

That was a great post.alot of really good content.i appreciate your time and your quality of thinking

ferhan (1 year ago) Reply

Windows (1 year ago) Reply

Hi, every time i used to check webpage posts here early in the dawn, because i love to find out more and more

khizer hayat (1 year ago) Reply

Nice work admin so well written. I really like it Thank you.

aisha (1 year ago) Reply

Ranvir (1 year ago) Reply

Nice post. I liked the way you explained the things. I feel that good content is the key for everything. Thanks again for writing such a good post.

Yogopa ltd (1 year ago) Reply

Nice Topic and i like about Don’t Anger Google tips thanks for sharing.

Kasia Perzyńska (1 year ago) Reply

Hey there :-) you are welcome! Have a nice day!

Seasonal Marketing: How to Apply It to Your Business

Joydeep Bhattacharya

5mins left

Regator’s Third Anniversary Celebration!

2013-02-09T14:21:00.000-08:00

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Regator is turning three years old, which, according to developmental milestones, means we should be able to sleep through the night (check!), feed ourselves with some spilling (check!), and make simple choices between two things (double check!). This year was all about making choices in Regatorland–though they weren't always simple.

In our third year, we made the important decision to, as they say in certain circles, pivot. We went from focusing exclusively on helping a mass-market audience find better online content to using our new API to help businesses make sense of data and help news organizations identify news faster. There are a lot of exciting things going on with Regator, and we'd love it if you could come out to celebrate our third anniversary with us. Here are the details…

What: Regator's third anniversary celebration
Where: Marlay House, 426 West Ponce De Leon Avenue, Decatur
When: 6pm til ?, Friday, August 19
Who: It will be a casual gathering and everyone who's a friend of Regator or a friend of the startup community in general is more than welcome.

Regator Launches Social Media-Powered Breaking News Service

2013-02-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

We know that journalists and bloggers would rather spend their time researching, reporting, and writing than sifting through mountains of information. That’s why we created Regator Breaking News (http://regatorbreakingnews.com), a service launching today that delivers custom up-to-the-minute news alerts directly to writers via desktop app, email, or web—often well before traditional news sites, Twitter trends, and other sources.*

Regator, launched in 2008, is best known as the home of the web’s leading collection of high-quality, human-curated blog content. The company’s Breaking News service uses proprietary semantic algorithms to analyze that carefully curated information, determining the importance of stories as they happen. This curated dataset ensures that the alerts that Regator Breaking News members receive come from trusted sources.

Journalists and bloggers can customize their notifications by choosing from more than 30 topics such as entertainment, politics, sports, business, and technology. Once an alert is issued, Regator Breaking News members have access to tools designed to help today’s busy writers get a story out quickly: graphs of historical coverage, social media monitoring, resources for sourcing photos, additional context, and more.

Kimberly Turner, cofounder of Regator and journalist, explains: “The goal of Regator Breaking News is simple: to help writers spend more time reporting and writing, and less time searching for the right stories to cover. Knowing that we’re bringing the news to them as it breaks, RBN members can focus on creating content rather than digging through RSS feeds, newswires, and social media.”

The Regator Breaking News desktop app (an Adobe Air app for PC, Mac, or Linux) also features the web’s most timely accurate trends for dozens of niches and, for those on an editorial team, a communication tool that allows members to comment on alerts, assign stories, and communicate with their team.

Regator Breaking News members always receive a 14-day free trial and can cancel any time. During the special Launch Sale, every member who signs up before June 14 will receive 50% off their first three months.

*Recent time trials on major breaking news stories found Regator Breaking News alerts arrived an average of 101.7 minutes before coverage of the same stories on CNN.com. Specific stories used are available upon request. The RBN alert for the release of Obama’s birth certificate on 4/27, for example, arrived 8 minutes before FoxNews.com coverage, 29 minutes before CNN.com coverage, 57 minutes before the Huffington Post email alert, and 11 minutes before it was trending on Twitter.

Breaking News App Update – Trends of Trends

2013-02-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

The launch of Regator Breaking News has been a resounding success with a great initial group of users from many of the companies that were on our shortlist of prospective users. We couldn't be happier… okay, we could always be happier. Since we launched nearly two weeks ago, we've been very busy refining the technology that makes Regator Breaking News tick. We've also been getting some great constructive feedback from our users and incorporating it into the product as we go.

On the website, some subtle updates have been made. The most prominent improvement is that the alert page now autofreshes. So there's no need to reload the page to get the latest alerts if you're not able to use the desktop app. Thanks to Sara at CNN for that feature request.

One of the most obvious and useful updates that we've made to the desktop app is adding trends to the trends results and search columns. So now, instead of getting posts about a trend or search, users will get related trends at the top of the column. This provides additional context and a quick way to see what this term is related though. We're trying our best to add functionality that improves its utility, yet maintains the simplicity and smooth user experience of the app…

We are continuing to evolve the Regator Breaking News app rapidly, so keep an eye out for more new updates; and if you've got suggestions, let us know.

13 More Reasons Regator Loves LessConf

2013-02-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

After our first LessConf experience last year, we wrote "29 Reasons Regator Loves LessConf." And to tell the truth, I wondered whether Steven Bristol and Allan Branch could deliver something as useful, inspiring and downright awesome as the first Atlanta-based conference (it was held in Jacksonville before last year). I never expected that they'd blow last year's event out of the water…but they did. Here are 13 *more* reasons why we think this is (bold statement alert) the most inspiring, useful tech conference of the year:

We don't even have to go to another city to attend. It's right in our backyard and is one of the best tech conferences anywhere. If you missed it, that was an error. Don't do it again: You can buy tickets for 2012 right now and they're only $175. I'm not sure where pricing will end up, but if you waited til the last minute this time, tickets were $433. They're worth every penny even at that price so the $175 is like getting a BMW for the price of a Honda Civic. Get on it, whydontcha!It is chock full of people who do stuff. Do-ers, as one speaker put it. Nobody you talk to there is "thinking about starting something" or trying to get money so that they can start something. These people are the real deal–web entrepreneurs who have real products and hard-earned wisdom. Which is why…I've made more actual friends at LessConf than any other tech conference. One of the first things we were told was "If you don't meet great people at LessConf, it's your fault." And that's the truth. DaveLinabury.com quotes LessConf organizer Allan Branch, who says it best: “We wanted to make the conference we’d want to attend. It’s more like a party than a conference in some ways. If you take away two or three things from the speakers, that’s great. But if you leave with 30 new friends, that’s what it’s all about.”Allan and Steve set the tone from the moment it starts: no pretention, no bullshit, no buzzwords. It's a conference with a sense of humor…Which is not to say it's not serious about providing inspiration and useful content. This year's speakers gave straightforward tips, information, and inspiration on everything from customer support, user experience, and design to pricing and, um, strip clubs. Grailbox has a fantastic summary of the panels.The venue had comfy chairs, ample power points, free parking, and solid wi-fi.Free neck and head massages again from Alicia Durrence and her magic hands were harder to get to this year because the sessions were so interesting and in between them…There were musical interludes by the talented and charming Allison Weiss and Julia Nunes, who also played one of the afterparties.Sweet, free LessConf shirts for all, plus an awesome swag bag with stickers, PopRocks, animal crackers, and other fun stuffWedgies. On stage. For prizes.Fantastic after-parties at The Loft (thanks, MailChimp) and the Artmore (thanks, We Are Titans) where we had plenty of time to meet each other, have some drinks, and listen to some great music.Free usability testing from usertesting.comIncredible moments: listening to an attendee start the conference with the customary whale joke, standing in the sun eating ice cream while the ice cream truck's music wafted over us, watching Steve try to sit on stage in his kilt, cracking open a fortune cookie to find custom LessConf messages.

Thanks for the encouragement, advice, and inspiration. We can't wait 'til next year!

(Owl photo by Kendrick Disch)

Regator Breaking News Video Walkthrough

2013-02-08T22:56:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

We have put together a quick introduction video to give you the basics of how the Regator Breaking News desktop app works and how to set it up. If you have any questions or suggestions, leave a comment on this post or contact us and we'll get right back to you.

Best Buy $50 off $100 Coupon, In-Store with Mastercard

2013-02-08T18:31:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

(Short version: Best Buy makes attempt to alienate the last few customers that they have left, and succeeds.)

Best Buy has a $50 off $100 coupon that is valid in-store only. You have to pay with a Mastercard, expires 1/27. BestBuy.com orders are not eligible, even with store pickup. There are many exclusions (see below), but amazingly gift cards are not excluded and Amazon or Amazon Kindle gift cards are sold at Best Buy stores. However, some store managers are denying them anyway without reason. Credit to SlickDeals.

Here is the e-mail that was sent out. Here is the original PDF coupon hosted on BestBuy.com. Here is a Facebook discussion (now deleted by Best Buy) where Best Buy agrees it’s legit, while simultaneously people report select store managers freaking out and rejecting the coupons. Good luck to those that decide to try it out.

Update: The coupon was completely neutered. “We printed the wrong things that were valid, the wrong things that were invalid, the wrong expiration date, the wrong everything.”

To qualify for the discount, MasterCard must be used on a purchase of $100 or greater. Coupon excludes the following: Home Theater: Bose® audio products; Polk Audio; Denon; Boston Acoustics; select Samsung home audio, TVs, Blu-ray DVD players; Sony home audio & headphones, TVs & 3D glasses, Blu-ray players, DVD players & set top boxes; Magnolia Products: Samsung TVs and Blu-ray players, Sony TVs, Blu-ray players and projectors, Sharp 90” TVs, Epson projectors, URC, Sennheiser, Sonance, Bowers & Wilkins, MartinLogan, McIntosh, Oppo and SpeakerCraft Audio and special order merchandise; Portable Electronics: Apple® iPods and Bose products; Digital Imaging: Sony camcorders, digital cameras, NEX cameras, DSLR cameras, lenses & flashes; Nikon DSLR & compact system cameras, lenses & flashes & P510; GoPro cameras; Phones: no-contract phones, broadband and airtime cards on all carriers, no contract airtime cards; gaming hardware; Pacific Sales products; Geek Squad®: C.O.D. Geek Squad services. Not valid on any BestBuy.com order, including store pickup. Best Buy employees are not eligible for this promotion. No dealers. No copies. No cash back. No cash value. Coupon must be presented at time of purchase.

Find more in Deals & Offers | 1/21/13, 11:02am | Trackback

You Can Never Get Enough Adult Traffic

2013-02-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota
December 26th, 2012

At the end of the day a website is a website, regardless of the subject matter. Websites are built to be understood by machines and consumed and viewed by humans. That being said, marketing a website that features adult content is really no different than marketing a website that sells shoes or shares information on how to rebuild a house.

There are numerous ways to drive more adult traffic to your website. You can buy adult traffic, focus on free methods of driving visitors to your site, or you can even do both. Here are seven ways to increase visitors to your adult content site. Remember, you cannot have sales or generate revenues, if you do not first have the traffic.

On the internet content is king. The most consumed and searched for commodity on the internet is information. Providing fresh, informative, quality content on your website is the foundation to generating more traffic to your website. Think of ways to offer quality, informative content to the visitors of your adult website. You could offer tips on dating, or ideas for sustaining a healthy sex life. You could also offer entertaining commentary to adult content stories in the news. No matter what you write about, keep it new, fresh, and consistent. Create new content every couple of days if possible.Check your work. Always proofread your content. Nothing will turn off visitors to your website like misspelled words, bad punctuation, and abysmal grammar. The goal is to turn people on with an adult website. Don’t let grammar mistakes be the distraction that leads them away.Optimize your website and the content on it for search engines to help increase your search engine ranking. The most common way for visitors to find your website online is through search engine results. Websites do not acquire excellent search engine rankings by chance. Search engine optimization starts with keyword research, so that you can include the words and phrases in your website content that visitors use, when searching for your website. Do not over stuff your website with unnecessary words. The content of the website should present itself, as if it were another human being describing to you what the website is about and what it contains.Getting other websites and pages to link to your website is the main method for generating more traffic to your website. At a minimum, trade links with other websites that are similar in nature to your own. Link trading means: the other website links to your website, and you, in turn, link to the other website. Focus on trading links with websites that are already attracting a lot of visitors. Develop an entire link building strategy to increase the number of websites and pages that are linking to your site. Getting as many highly trafficked websites to link to you as possible is a key strategy for increasing the traffic to your website.Do not forget to use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to increase your website traffic. Since your website includes adult content, you will need to familiarize yourself with any rules that the social media site may have regarding adult content. It is possible to promote your adult content website and generate followers and still remain within the social media site’s guidelines. Remember the goal is to create an online community surrounding your website.Write articles and/or manage a blog. Remember, content is king. You can generate content away from your site as well. Not only do online article and blog posts allow you to continue to create fresh content and information for visitors, but they also allow you to create links back to your site. Writing online articles and maintaining a blog help increase traffic to your website in two ways.Give visitors something for free. Giving something for free has been a tried and true method for increasing traffic to a website, since websites began. One strategy for adult websites is to allow access to certain content for a limited amount of time. Give visitors a taste or a tease of the content you have to offer, before forcing them to commit with their wallets. Offering something for free will increase referral and viral traffic. If you do this correctly, you will give the visitors just enough for free to whet their appetite, but still leave them wanting for more.Tags: buy adult traffic, website traffic

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2012 at 5:49 PM and is filed under Adult Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Google posts Q4 earnings results; Revenue up 36% while profits only up 7% year over year

2013-02-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

While all eyes will be on Apple's earnings report tomorrow, Google earlier today released its earnings results from Q4 2012 and posted revenue of $14.42 billion, a figure which would have been $15.24 billion if revenue from Motorola Home was included.

"We ended 2012 with a strong quarter,” Google CEO Larry Page said in a press release. "Revenues were up 36% year-on-year, and 8% quarter-on-quarter. And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year – not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half. In today’s multi-screen world we face tremendous opportunities as a technology company focused on user benefit. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be at Google.”

But enough about revenue, how much did Google actually take home in profit last quarter?

Well, the recorded $2.9 billion in profit, or $8.62 a share. By way of contrast, during the same quarter a year-ago, Google posted a profit of $2.7 billion or earnings of $8.22 per share.

So while Google's revenues are up an impressive 36%, its net profit only grew by about 7.5% Analysts were anticipating EPS of $10.57 on revenue of $12.38 billion. It'll be interesting to see how the market rewards or punishes Google for their revenue growth and slower-than-anticipated profit growth.

Some other notes of interest from Google's earnings report include:

The number of aggregate paid clicks at Google during the last quarter rose by approximately 24% from the same quarter a year-ago.

Cost-per-click rates, however, decreased by 6% year over year.

Google spent more than $1 billion on infrastructure in the last quarter, representing the company's second largest quarterly infrastructure expenditure in history.

And conspicuously absent from Google's earnings report was any mention of Google+.

via Google

The benefits of Amazon fall of 45%, shares of AMZN reaches record

2013-02-08T06:09:00.000-08:00

If you are looking for consistency in Wall Street, forget about it. Earlier this week Amazon announced profits that Wall St. estimates survived a little. Ultimately, Amazon reported a net profit of 97 million $ (a decrease of 45% year over year) and EPS of $0.21 to $0.38 per share in the same quarter a year earlier.

Analysts are expecting earnings of $0.27 per share and 22.26 billion $ in sales. Amazon delivered 21,27 billion $.

While is it happened then? Because the way Apple has plunged by more than 10% after having reported their fourth most profitable in history and exceeded estimates of Wall Street to the EPS, stands to reason why Amazon would thus increase?

Well as it turns out, investors applauded announced subpar earnings for Amazon to propel the stock to the summits. Currently, Amazon shares are trading at $277.37, the stock is up almost 7%. In the trade after hours last night, the stock increased by 10%.

For some reason, Wall Street is enamoured with Jeff Bezos and Amazon, and despite the fact that the company lost money in 2012 the stock continues as rising tomorrow. Specifically, the company lost 39 million $ in 2012.

Delve more deeply into revenues from Amazon, greater detailing of the nation said that up to 70% eBook sales while sales of physical books had their lowest growth for 17 years, increase of only 5%.

In the future, Amazon provides sales of 15 billion $ 16.6 billion $, slightly below the estimates of Wall Street to 16.85 billion $.

Anyway that you look at, it boggles the mind that the shares of Amazon are on the top and upwards. I guess in the harsh world and dry which is the stock market, revenue growth is the name of the game. To this end, if Apple making money hand over fist, increase the profits of 20% is much more difficult that it is for a company like Amazon is actually losing money.

Well, trying to figure out the stock market is a losing battle and sometimes you just sit and watch the absurdity of unfold.

In any case, the following table, courtesy of Fortune really drives home the difference in the way the street views Amazon and Apple.

On the flip side, the New York Times yesterday, tried to give a sense of pleasure to the investor in income from Amazon:

What attracted the attention of investors is that operating margins as a percentage of the consolidated turnover increased by 3.2%, 2.7% a year earlier.
The carrot for investors to Amazon improvement in margin over time,"says Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray. Apple, on the other hand, would need to build an iPhone less expensive to continue to grow as rapidly as it has been, which is expected to decide in its margins.
For more than ten years, Amazon has wavered between minimal profit and no profit. In 2012, he said Tuesday, he lost money. But Wall Street has always been more promises that results, and Amazon is always on the verge of transforming its online presence overwhelming buckets of money.
'As long as the dream is there, the stock will go up,' said Mr. Munster.

And so it goes to Wall Street.

TreeHugger CEO Apartment: 420 Square Feet, 8 Rooms

2013-02-08T02:57:00.000-08:00

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I’m surprised I missed this earlier since I love this type of thing, but below is a nicely edited video from Gizmodo showing the 420 square feet apartment of TreeHugger.com CEO Graham Hill. It’s cool how they fit in the claimed 8 rooms using moving walls, floor-to-ceiling storage, and clever furniture and appliances: living room, office, bedroom, guest bedroom, dining room, bathroom, kitchen, and I guess they’re counting the closet as a room? You really have to see it to understand.

I like this concept, especially when efficient use of space allows you to be able to afford to live in the heart of a good city where you can do much of your “living” outside in parks, cafes, bars, and restaurants. I’ve seen the moving wall before inside this Hong Kong apartment (only 344 sf), and much of the furniture is from Resource Furniture (eek, that fancified murphy bed costs $12,000). Installing solar panels (on the window shades?) with battery storage is a nice touch, and I’d consider the portable induction burners and combo microwave/induction oven for my own place.

More on this apartment: LifeEdited, New York Times

Find more in Frugal Living, Real Estate, Simple Living | 1/29/13, 10:41pm | Trackback

5 Common Mistakes Of PPC Campaign Management

2013-02-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

PPC (pay-per-click) marketing and advertising has the potential to be a very quick method buy web traffic and bring targeted visitors to your website, who are likely to buy and provide you with an excellent return on your investment. If a PPC campaign is not managed and implemented correctly, it can prove to be a liability to a business instead of an asset.

An Investment with Little or No Return is a Bad Investment

PPC campaigns are generally easy to setup and activate. It takes only a short amount of time to sign up for a Google AdWords account, follow the setup instructions, set a budget, and begin running your ads. There are several success stories out there of businesses that have setup and run their own PPC campaigns with great returns and increased profits. However, for every success story there is a story of money lost on PPC due to poor implementation and a lack of time and ability to focus on the PPC campaign.

Here is a list of potential hazards business owners can run into, when trying to operate their own PPC campaigns.

Poor Keyword Selection
General, broad keywords and phrases may appear to draw a lot of clicks and traffic, but they are very poor choices, when it comes to finding customers and buyers online. If you run a business that sells tires, for example, and you bid on the term “tires” as one of your main keywords in your PPC campaign, you will waste your money for two main reasons. On the surface tires may seem like a great keyword to bid on, because it is searched millions of times per month. However, the competition for the broad term “tires” is very high and you will have to bid too much per click to rank well for the term, driving your marketing costs up and up. Also, the term “tires” does not indicate buying intent. The person searching may want to learn how tires are made, instead of wanting to buy tires from you.Misuse of a Daily Budget
Oftentimes, people do not understand the potential number of clicks they can receive in a day for poor keyword usage. When you buy web traffic and choose broad keywords, you will increase your per click cost as well as the number of useless, untargeted clicks you receive. It is possible to burn through your daily budget in a few hours and have nothing to show for it. There are also examples of unaware business owners accidentally setting their daily budget to the monthly budget amount and blowing their entire monthly PPC budget in a day.When the World is Not Your Customer
Local businesses are able to take advantage of PPC marketing by targeting the geographical locations, within which they operate. Many local businesses use the internet to attract visitors to their website for one of two purposes … to either research online and then come into the store to buy, or to buy online and then come into the store to pick up the item(s). It is not uncommon for business owners, who are unfamiliar with proper PPC campaign setup, to mess up geo-targeting and either target the wrong location or include the entire world as their customer base. This can become very bad for business, when numerous refunds are required, because a local business does not ship their products.Ignoring Negative Keywords
Most first timers or PPC AdWords are not even aware of what negative keywords are, let alone how to properly use them. Ignoring negative keywords can lead to several unwanted and costly clicks on your PPC campaign.PPC Ad and Landing Page Inconsistency
It is important to maintain consistency throughout the PPC ad and click process. You PPC ads should be use relevant keywords correlating to the search terms entered by the searcher. Your PPC ads should use ad copy that entices searchers to click on them, using legitimate advertising and claims. Also, the page that the searcher lands on should be consistent with the keywords and ad copy used in the PPC campaign. If the landing page is not what the searcher expects, based on their search and the ad they clicked on, then they are highly likely to leave and cost you money with no return. Maintaining consistency throughout the entire process and on your landing pages will provide you the best opportunity to convert to visitor into a customer.

With proper setup and PPC campaign management, PPC can be a very effective means for generating visitors and building revenue. If done incorrectly, PPC can quickly become a money pit and a very effective means of losing your business a great deal of money.

Tags: buy web traffic, ppc campaign management

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2013 at 3:57 PM and is filed under PPC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

GradSave.com: Contribute to 529 Plan with Credit Card

2013-02-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

LivingSocial is currently offering a $50 Gradsave gift card for $24. The GradSave College Savings Gift Card can be redeemed for a $50 deposit into any national 529 college savings plan. So if you’re already meaning to contribute some money towards a 529 plan, it’s basically $26 in free money. I bought one and requested it to be transferred it to my daughter’s existing Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 plan. Limit 1 voucher per customer, beneficiary, account, savings plan, or 529 plan.

(Reminder, you can save a little extra on your LivingSocial deals with cashback shopping portals like eBates ($10 new customer bonus), Mr. Rebates ($5 bonus), and BigCrumbs.)

Additionally, GradSave.com is currently waiving all credit card processing fees on their gift cards as another start-up promotion. So, if you wanted to contribute say $1,000 towards your 529 plan, now you could earn cashback, points, or miles on your credit card for that amount (with no fees) instead of via check or bank account transfer. Also potentially handy towards spending hurdles on $500+ credit card bonuses.

A day later, credit card fees are no longer waived. The fees are rather high as well, even for bank transfers.

529 contributions can be taken out without penalty. If you withdraw any earnings for unqualified expenses, then you will be subject to income taxes as well as a 10% penalty. Still, it may be a lot of paperwork and/or headache unless you keep your records very clean and simple.

Find more in College & Education, Deals & Offers | 1/14/13, 12:23pm | Trackback

Free Credit for Amazon MP3 Downloads

2013-02-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

Updated. Here’s another $2 in free Amazon MP3 credit up for grabs. Visit this link for the details – you’ll need a Facebook account for this one (real or spam account, you decide).

It should increase your gift card balance for music purchases only. Limit one promotional credit per customer, so my wife and I both jump on these to fill up the iPod. We download the files manually and combine them onto a shared iTunes library. Must be redeemed by 11:59 p.m. PST on January 10, 2013.

Find more in Deals & Offers | 1/3/13, 11:01am | Trackback

Increase Your Traffic To Increase Your Profits

2013-02-07T10:02:00.000-08:00

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
November 28th, 2012

A broad definition of web traffic is simply the number of visitors to your website. It can be direct traffic, search engine traffic, or referral traffic. Web traffic not only includes the number of visitors to your website, but also the number of pages on your website each person visits. Successful website owners are constantly gathering and analyzing statistical data from their websites to understand and better serve their website traffic. There are several methods online for generating both paid and free website traffic to your website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click advertising are two basic and fairly well known strategies for promoting your eCommerce business online. There are also other low cost or no cost methods available for sending free website visitors to your online store. Certain internet marketing strategies allow you to leverage the traffic and popularity of other online resources. Never before in the history of business has free marketing and advertising been so readily available and profitable as it has been in the internet/e-commerce age.

Here are seven internet marketing strategies that allow you to leverage to traffic and popularity of other websites and will help you increase traffic to your website.

Blogs exist that allow guest bloggers and article writers. Write a blog post and submit it as a guest blogger. Search online for bloggers seeking content.Take advantage of article marketing by writing online article and submitting them to the top article submission websites. Go to google.com and search for “article submission sites”.Start an affiliate program that rewards and compensates others for marketing and advertising your products and services online. Write articles and ad copy that you can distribute to your affiliates to be used as marketing text. Your affiliates will use the content you provided on their websites or blogs. Not only does this help drive qualified traffic to your website, but it also provides backlinks to your site. Affiliates are highly motivated, because when a customer makes a purchase on your website, the affiliate makes a commission.Video is the online medium in highest demand. Think of it this way … The majority of people would rather see the movie than read the book. It is the same online. Internet users in many instances would rather watch a video of you reading an online article to them than actually reading the article themselves. YouTube has made it very easy to record, upload, optimize, and market video online. There is no reason not to use video as a fun and easy marketing strategy.Webinars or online seminars have become a very popular method of bringing people together to experience an online presentation. Participate in numerous webinars, where you are either the presenter or the guest. In either case you can contribute to the webinar and include your credentials as the ownerofyourwebsite.com.Participate in forums or on message boards. Take a unique stance or play the devil’s advocate on a topic, even if you do not necessarily side with the opinion you are presenting. Your unique opinion will spark conversation and discussion. Opportunities to market yourself and your website will then arise.Create “Top 10 Lists” that review and promote the products and services of others. This is especially effective for those participating in affiliate marketing, because each of the products reviewed provides an opportunity to include an affiliate link. Lists such as these are highly trafficked, because they present information in a quick and easily digestible format. Make sure to include links to your website and products in the review list as well.

Pay per click marketing and search engine optimization are effective and even necessary marketing strategies to implement to promote your online business and drive traffic to your eCommerce website. However, these are not the only methods online for promoting and advertising. You can and should participate in the online community surrounding the main topic of your website. Being a guest blogger, writing and publishing articles, creating and marketing videos about your products, producing product review lists, and participating in online message boards and forums are just a few of the ways you can utilize the success of others to increase your success. Through these ideas and tips you can gain visitors and customers by piggybacking off the popularity and success of these other online platforms.

Tags: free website traffic

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 at 12:02 PM and is filed under How to Get More Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

iPhone are responsible for almost 84% of AT & T smartphone sales last quarter

2013-02-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

While the fine folks on Wall Street are bearish on Apple due to lower than expected sales of the iPhone, they are apparently ignoring the fact that the iPhone is train to become the most popular combination on every single American carrier where it is available. Recently, Verizon has released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012 and revealed that the iPhone activations increased by 47%-year Apple smartphone made up 63% of all activations of smartphone during the recent holiday quarter.

And earlier today, AT & T has published its results for the fourth quarter of 2012 and touted the 8.6 million record-setting iPhone activation. AT & T was also very proud of the fact that 16% of these activations were new AT & T customers. At the same time, AT & T also pointed out that the quarter has seen the company reached a record in relation to the Android smartphone sales.

So the iPhone is selling surprisingly well on AT & T, but just how popular is it compared to the rest of AT & T stable smartphone devices?

Well, on the whole, AT & T sold a record 10.2 million of smartphones. Thus, while the total number of sales of the iPhone is of course a bit under 8.6 million activations, it goes without saying that the total number of sales of the iPhone is close enough. As a result, the iPhone this past quarter composed about 84% of all sales of smartphone on AT & T.

Then, when we take a look at the two biggest carriers in the United States, iPhone sales constitute the vast majority of the total smartphone sales. And to think that experts still think iPhone demand is decreasing at the hands of devices like the Galaxy S III.

TechCrunch adds:

... AT & T activated iPhones 8.6 million, compared with 6.2 million of Verizon, which means that combines the two U.S. carriers represented 14.8 million units, or around just a hair less than 31% of all iPhones sold worldwide by Apple during the quarter. AT & T is always number one in sales of the device, despite the fact that its monopoly on the iPhone is over Apple years ago.

In regards to the actual financial results of AT & T, the company recorded a loss of $0.68 per share, compared with a quarterly loss of $ 1.12 per share in the same quarter a year before.

by AT & T

Free FACT Consumer Reports: Banking, Insurance, and Employment History

2013-02-07T01:45:00.000-08:00

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Annual reminder for 2013. The most well known part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) is that you can get a free copy of your credit reports from all three major credit bureaus once every 12 months. However, there are also several other consumer databases that you should check as well which are also available absolutely free once every 12 months, and they can also have a significant financial impact. If you got one last year, you can now get another one and reset the 12 month clock.

ChexSystems Banking History
ChexSystems is a consumer information database used by an estimated 80-90% of all banks to help determine the risk of opening new accounts. Think of it as the bank’s version of a credit bureau. If a person commits check fraud or overdraws their account, it will be listed here. In addition, the simple act of opening or closing a bank account may be recorded in their database. Getting a negative ChexSystems record can leave you blacklisted from opening bank accounts at most major banks.

Get your free ChexSystems consumer report here.

Medical History Used For Insurance Underwriting
MIB (previously known as Medical Information Bureau) is run by 470 insurance companies and has a “primary mission of detecting and deterring fraud that may occur in the course of obtaining life, health, disability income, critical illness, and long-term care insurance.” They record information of “underwriting significance” for those who have applied for life and health insurance with MIB member companies. If you have not applied for individually underwritten life, health, or disability income insurance during the preceding seven year period, then you probably don’t have a record.

Get your free MIB consumer file here.

Insurance Claims History
CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, and they collect information that is used to calculate your potential risk of loss and thus your insurance premiums. You can also find out about previous claims on the house you are currently renting or recently bought, even if they weren’t made by you.

The C.L.U.E. ®Personal Property report provides a seven year history of losses associated with an individual and his/her personal property. The following data will be identified for each loss: date of loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general information such as policy number, claim number and insurance company name.
The C.L.U.E. ®Auto report provides a seven year history of automobile insurance losses associated with an individual. The following data will be identified for each loss: date of loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general information such as policy number, claim number and insurance company name.

Get your free CLUE Auto and Personal Property Reports here.

In addition, you should also request your free A-PLUS report (Automated Property Loss Underwriting System), which is a smaller database that also contains information about property loss claims.

Employment History
When a potential employer runs a background check through LexisNexis (formerly known as ChoicePoint), this is the information they see. It doesn’t seem to claim be comprehensive, and they may have only limited or even no data about you, but I would still check for potentially negative data.

LexisNexis Screening Solutions Inc. provides Employment History Reports to employers only with a job applicant’s or employee’s consent. Employers utilize a variety of companies to obtain employment history information. Our files would only contain information on you if LexisNexis provided your Employment History Report to an employer.

Get your free LexisNexis employment history report here.

Tenant History
This report can be important if you are a renter and someone runs a background check on you at LexisNexis (ChoicePoint).

LexisNexis Screening Solutions provides Resident History Reports to housing providers that have the subject’s consent. Housing Providers utilize a variety of companies to obtain tenant history information. Our files would only contain information on you if LexisNexis provided your Resident History Report to a housing provider.

Get your free LexisNexis tenant history report here.

LexisNexis Full Disclosure File
You may notice that LexisNexis is involved in many different areas above. As one of the largest personal information databases in the US and a for-profit company (part of Reed Elsevier), they should just rename themselves Big Brother, Inc. You can request a “Full File Disclosure” that supposedly includes all of the information that they have on you – including public records, real estate transaction and ownership data, lien, judgment, and bankruptcy records, professional license information, and historical addresses on file.

Request your LexisNexis Full File Disclosure here. You’ll need to fill out a PDF form and snail mail it in.

This is part of my annual checklist at the beginning of each new year.

Find more in Banking, Insurance, Real Estate | 1/2/13, 12:01pm | Trackback

Tim Cook aborde la rumeur de la demande baisse iPhone 5, type de

2013-02-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

Last week, the Apple blogosphere shook with a rumor a bit schematically origin in the Wall Street Journal saying Apple has scale back its orders for the screens of the iPhone 5 by 50%. Naturally, Apple shares took a dive as well, and the usual parade of pundits were out in full force, proclaiming that the application for the iPhone 5 faded.

Now that Apple has released its earnings, we know that demand for the iPhone remains strong. Tim Cook noted that the offer was limited throughout the quarter, and through all this, Apple has managed to sell iPhones 47.8 million, jumped by 30% since the same quarter last year.

With regard to the reports that the iPhone is on the decline, it has been speculated that reduction Apple poster orders (which sweat, not only at the level originally reported) was simply the result of the improvement of yields on robust manufacturing displays. In a note to investors, analyst of JP Morgan Mark Moskowitz explained, "in our opinion, the potential order cuts are a direct result of the manufacture gives improve following product deployments fast and furious of the iPhone 5 new iPads and Macs. ''

All this being said, Tim Cook during earnings conference call Apple today asked flat out on iPhone application in the next quarter.

Cook then took the opportunity to address, sort of, the rumor above concerning the application of flat iPhone.

If you look at the iPhone sales throughout the quarter, we were limited to a large part of the area on the iPhone 5. So as we begin to ship more, sales increased with the production. iPhone 4 was forced for the whole quarter, and sales remained strong.
Months of rumors on the reductions of the order and so on, so let me take a moment to comment on them. No comment on any particular rumor that I would spend my life to do it. I suggest sound good to question the accuracy of all kind of rumour about the construction plans. Even if a particular point of factual data, it would be impossible to interpret this data point as to what that meant for our company. The supply chain is very complex and we have multiple sources for things. Yields can vary, the performance of service providers may vary. There is a long excessive list of things that can make any single data point not a great proxy for what is happening.

So, basically, if you want to take an optimistic view of things, we should not to excite all a mere rumor from typical uncorroborated sources. And even if we have a fact - in this case, Apple drop display orders - Cook reminds us that such a change could be the result of a number of factors. Yields may improve, Moskowitz wrote last week, and as suggested by Cook, Apple has many suppliers, so it's important to remember that any digestion 'facts' that applies to issues such as iPhone application should be examined with the good contextual framework - something that analysts often seem to forget.

Finally, it is easy to get carried away by rumors, but let us not forget what is really - and hard-chills.

To this end, Apple sold more iPhones this quarter than ever before in the history of the company. sales of the iPhone in China increased by three digits on a percentage basis. And Cook noted, inter alia, that the proportion of sales of the iPhone 5 measured against total iPhone sales is the same as the iPhone 4s in the same quarter of a quarter. Translation? The iPhone 5 seems to do very well.

transcript via Mac rumors

TurboTax vs. TaxACT vs. H&R Block at Home: 2012 Lightning Review

2013-02-06T16:35:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

According to a MyMoneyBlog.com reader poll taken last year, 52% used TurboTax, 18% used TaxACT, and 14% used H&R Block at Home to prepare their tax returns, which agreed with the most popular software overall in the US. The remaining 16% either used an accountant (10%), filed on paper (4%), or used another software (2%).

Last year, I used each of “The Big 3? to do my taxes in order to compare and contract in detail the three software programs. (As an example, my TurboTax 2011 review talks about comma-insertion as a feature…) I plan to do the same thing this year, but to help you early-birds, here’s the highly-condensed version of my reviews:

Accuracy and Maximum Refund Guarantees
In terms of accuracy and interview style, I think all three are comparable if not nearly identical. In fact, I’m certain they all dissect each other’s products annually to ensure this. As such, all three offer a “Maximum Refund Guarantee” as well as a “Accuracy Guarantee” that states that they will pay any penalty and interest assessed by the IRS or your state due to calculation errors on their part (though H&R Block limits this to $10,000).

In my opinion, the remaining major differentiating factors are price, time-saving features, and audit support. Now, there are various discounts and sales that pop up, but here I’m just comparing regular sticker prices.

TurboTax Online

The most popular and most polished-looking user interface.Federal Deluxe regular price is $29.99. State return price is $36.99.Best import support from payroll providers and financial institutions for automatic import of W-2 and 1099 forms.Moderate audit support (you get help, but no in-person representation)

Bottom line: The time-saving choice if you have a lot of brokerage and/or bank 1099s to electronically import, or a lot of details to import from last year’s return and you used them last year. For those like me that would pay extra to avoid all that tax lot data entry.

TaxACT Online

Cheapest overall with Federal Deluxe regular price at $9.99. Many can get by with Federal Free version. Cheapest state return at $8.00.Again, just as accurate as the others.Limited import support (worst of the three).Limited audit support (worst of the three).

Bottom line: The value choice if you just want reliable DIY tax return software and don’t need any extras.

H&R Block at Home Online

Federal Deluxe regular price is $29.95. State return price is $34.95.Moderate import support for 1099s and W-2 (not as broad at TurboTax, better than TaxACT)Best free audit support, as it includes an H&R Block Enrolled Agent actually attending your audit in-person. Neither TurboTax and TaxAct not offer representation. However, you must think about whether you would hire your own representative in the actual event of an IRS audit (probably depends on severity).

Bottom line: The sleep-well-at-night choice if you want the assurance that a federally-authorized enrolled agent will guide you for free through a potential albeit unlikely audit.

Find more in Reviews, Taxes | 1/10/13, 8:51pm | Trackback

My Money Blog Retirement Portfolio Update – January 2013

2013-02-06T11:56:00.000-08:00

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Here’s a belated 2012 year-end update of our investment portfolio, including employer 401(k) plans, self-employed retirement plans, Traditional and Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage holdings. Cash reserves (emergency fund), college savings accounts, experimental portfolios, and day-to-day cash balances are excluded. This is the portfolio that we are depending on to create income and thus financial freedom.

Here is my current actual asset allocation:

The overall target asset allocation remains the same:

Put simply, I pick asset classes that are likely to provide a long-term return above inflation, as well as offer some historical tendencies to be less correlated to each other. I don’t hold commodities futures or gold because I am not confident in them enough to know that I will hold them through an extended period of underperformance (and if you don’t do that, there’s no point). Our current ratio is about 75% stocks and 25% bonds.

For the last decade, I have stuck to buy, hold, and rebalance. I also keep costs at a minimum in terms of fund expense ratios, commissions paid, and tax-efficiency. A list of specific holdings is below.

Stock Holdings
Vanguard Total Stock Market Fund (VTI, VTSMX, VTSAX)
Vanguard Small-Cap Value Index Fund (VBR, VISVX, VSIAX)
Vanguard Total International Stock Market Fund (VXUS, VGTSX, VTIAX)
Vanguard Emerging Markets Fund (VWO, VEIEX, VEMAX)
Vanguard REIT Index Fund (VNQ, VGSIX, VGSLX)

Bond Holdings
Vanguard Limited-Term Tax-Exempt Fund (VMLTX, VMLUX)
Vanguard High-Yield Tax-Exempt Fund (VWAHX, VWALX)
PIMCO Total Return Institutional* (PTTRX)
Stable Value Fund* (2.6% yield, net of fees)
iShares Barclays TIPS Bond ETF (TIP)
Individual TIPS securities

The only significant change from last time is that I have moved some money over to the Vanguard High-Yield Tax-Exempt Fund. If you look at the holdings, it’s actually a relatively high-quality, intermediate-term municipal bond fund. Over 80% of the bonds are rated A-AAA, and the duration is only 6 years. Compare this with the popular Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund that is 90% A-AAA (tons of US government-backed debt at very low rates), and a duration of 5 years. I like mixing this fund with the Limited-Term muni fund to replace a Total Bond fund for my bonds in taxable accounts as my income tax bracket is high. I admit that I am reaching for yield, but I don’t think I’m reaching very much overall and I’m getting enough incremental yield in return. Inflation-linked bonds and the rest are in tax-deferred accounts.

A future change that I am looking to implement is to swap out Vanguard Small-Cap Value Index Fund for probably the iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF (IWN) as it holds even smaller, more-value oriented stocks than the Vanguard ETF. Also, I want to swap out Vanguard Emerging Markets Fund for the WisdomTree Emerging Mkts SmallCap Dividend ETF (DGS) as if focuses on small, dividend/value-oriented stocks in emerging countries. Why? The whole point of those small 5% allocations is to add some spice and risk to my portfolio while reaching into areas not well-covered by the broad index funds.

The overall expense ratio for this portfolio is in the neighborhood of .20% annually, or 20 basis points, which is much lower hurdle to overcome than the average mutual fund expense ratio of over 1% annually. PTTRX and Stable Value fund are the best of limited choices in a 401k. This is all DIY, so I don’t pay portfolio management or financial advisor fees.

I usually don’t bother calculating the actual rate of return because doing it properly involves accounting for the dates and amount of all new contributions. In addition, most of my investments are passive so you can find the performance easily by looking at individual index and/or fund returns. But doing some rough calculations for 2012:

Total US +16.4%
Total International +18.2%
US Small Cap Value +18.6%
Emerging Markets +18.8%
REIT +17.7%
Total US Bond +4.0%
TIP +6.8%
————
Weighted average = 14.5%

To measure our progress towards total financial independence, I use a 3% theoretical withdrawal rate and compare that with our expected future expenses. This is lower than the common 4% withdrawal rate because we intend to retire early and our money may have to last much longer than most (50+ years). This results in a goal of 33 times our expected annual spending. Currently, our portfolio would theoretically cover 66% of our expected expenses.

The 3% withdrawal rate is simply a rule-of-thumb, although I’d like if the dividends and interest payments from our holding would create a 3% yield. Currently, our overall income yield would be somewhere between 2-3%. We may also add a rental property to the mix which would increase yield but also increase potential headache.

Find more in Goals, Investing, Retirement | 1/23/13, 5:11pm | Trackback

Shares of AAPL take a dive after earnings Records

2013-02-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

Release suite of Apple last night - where the most profitable fourth quarter have been published in the history of the world - Apple shares took a dive, falling more than 10% to the range of $460.

Addressing the absurdity of Wall Street, some were disappointed that Apple has not quite hit a consensus of estimates of revenue and sales of the iPhone, even though the overall profits of Apple corresponded to what analysts were expecting. As a result, Apple shares now traded almost 52-week low.

So, what gives? Why is one of the most profitable companies on the planet taking a beating in the stock market? Well, much of this has to do with tips from Apple for the next quarter.

Historically, Apple has issued guidelines very conservative he was able to beat it hands down. Soon, the analysts spread to small set of Apple and started ignoring directives from Apple altogether. This often resulted in estimates of profits for Apple, which were large enough, and while Apple has been able to follow for some time, growth can be indeed slowing down.

Anyway, financial director Apple Peter Oppenhiemer pointed out yesterday that Apple would no longer conservative issue, but would be issuing a realistic range with regard to its future earnings.

In recent years, our guidance reflects a point estimate of conservative or results every quarter we have reasonable confidence in the achievement. Further, we intend to offer a range of guidelines that reflect our faith in what we are likely to get.

In the future, Apple is anticipated revenues for the next quarter to fall in the range of $41 to 43 billion. That is significantly less than the sum of 45 billion $ estimate on Wall Street, people were expecting. And since Apple is civilian is no longer their orientation, there is now less a hypothesis that Apple will blow beyond the estimates of each and provide earnings Records. For what it's worth, income from Apple during the quarter January-March 2012 was 39.2 billion $.

The takeaway from all this, it is that many think that the growth of Apple slows permanently, and as a result, the stock is to take a dive.

PlasticJungle Promotion: Sell $200 in Gift Cards, Get $20 in Credit

2013-02-06T03:43:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

Have some unused or unwanted gift cards left over? Gift card exchange site PlasticJungle.com is having a promotion where if you sell them $200 in gift cards by midnight Friday, you’ll get $20 credit towards a future gift card purchase. When you go to the Sell gift card section, you should see this message:

The offer text:

Sell us $200 and get $20 off your next Purchase!
Sell us $200 or more worth of Gift Cards in a single transaction this week and we will give you a $20 credit off of your next Gift Card Purchase from Plastic Jungle! This promotion will run from now until 12:00am PST Saturday morning (1/19/13).

Remember, you can sell multiple different cards, but it has to be in one single transaction. A 10% rebate may get you back close to face value, given that you generally lose about 5-20% when selling your gift cards to these types of places. You can get paid via Amazon.com gift card, check, or deposit into a PayPal account. Many cards can be sold electronically with their unique numbers, while some of them you have to mail in.

You shouldn’t have too much of a problem finding a gift card to buy with your $20 credit, assuming you shop at any chain store (Wal-mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, CVS, Walgreens). I’ve mentioned before that I often buy Home Depot gift cards from PlasticJungle, at times via smartphone while still standing in the store. I just buy the “eCode” electronic gift card, have the cashier type it in, and I save another 7% on top of my other coupons or discounts.

Find more in Deals & Offers | 1/16/13, 10:04pm | Trackback

Index Fund vs. Top Hedge Funds: Buffett Bet Halfway Update

2013-02-06T00:12:00.000-08:00

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Halfway Update – 5 Years Later! Carol Loomis has posted the 5-year update in Fortune of the $1,000,000 index fund vs. hedge fund bet. Halfway through the 10-year bet (1/1/08 to 12/31/17), the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund backed by Buffett is up by 8.69%. The group of hedge funds hand-picked by Protégé Partners are up by 0.13%. Note that the index fund had been lagging just about ever year since this one, but that’s why we are looking at a longer period. Consider this halftime.

It will be very interesting to see how this turns out. Hedge funds charge fees of roughly 2% of assets annually + 20% of any gains. You may notice that five years of 2% fees would be 10% (ignoring the compounding effect for simplicity), and the hedge funds are lagging by about 9%. Costs matter!

You can read the terms of the bet and each side’s arguments at LongBets.org (also see original Fortune article below for backstory). This carefully-tracked bet was part of the inspiration for my transparent Beat the Market experiment. Too often, people are not honestly and accurately tracking the total performance of their portfolios. These ongoing updates help illustrate how hard it is to consistently beat a low-cost, diversified portfolio over the long run, and how it’s incorrect to declare yourself a winner even after several good years. Who knows, the hedge funds may still win.

Original blog post from 2008:

In the Fortune article “Buffett’s Big Bet”, we see how it came to be that Buffett bet a million dollars that a simple S&P 500 index fund would beat a group of 5 top hedge funds over 10 years. The bet will run from 1/1/2008 to 12/31/2017.

In one corner, you have the Vanguard’s 500 Index fund, ticker VFIAX (admiral shares), which tracks the S&P 500 Index with a lean 0.07% annual expense ratio. (The regular investor shares are VFINX.) It passively invests in small pieces of huge publicly-traded US companies.

In the other corner, you have a group of five hedge funds hand-picked by a big name Wall Street money management firm called Protege (funds of funds, actually). They have worked with folks like David Swensen, and George Soros. Hedge funds are usually only available to individuals with more than $1 million net worth or $200,000 annual income, and they can invest in just about anything. Tiny companies, entire companies, foreign companies, pork belly futures, whatever. However, in exchange you pay big fees: 1% annually for the fund of funds layer, 1.5% annually for the hedge funds themselves, and then 20% of any gains each year on top of that.

Past performance stats: From its inception in July 2002 through the end of 2007, the Protégé fund gained 95% (after all fees), soundly beating the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund’s 64%.

Warren Buffett bet on the index fund, believing that those fees are simply too high to overcome, even with their perfect alignment of interest, some of the smartest minds in the world, and the ability to invest in just about anything. But more important of course are either the shame or bragging rights to those hedge fund managers!

Buffett himself assesses his chances of winning at only 60%, which he grants is less of an edge than he usually likes to have. Protégé figures its own probabilities of winning at a heady 85%. Some people will say, of course, that just by making this bet, Protégé has acquired some priceless publicity.

The last part is probably true. No matter what, Protege will make a ton of money in fees at the end of 10 years. If they win the bet, they’ll be on magazine covers and end up even more insanely rich. If they lose, they simply change their hedge fund name and try again.

Find more in Investing | 1/28/13, 9:48pm | Trackback

Apple posts record revenue and profits; iPhone sales jump nearly 30% while iPad sales up nearly 50%

2013-02-05T19:54:00.000-08:00

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AppId is over the quota

Apple just posted its earnings results from the 2012 holiday quarter and posted revenue of $54.5 billion, net profit of $13.1 billion and EPS of $13.81. During the same quarter a year ago, Apple posted revenue of $46.33 billion and profits of $13.06 billion, resulting in EPS of $13.87.

It's important to note, though, that last year's holiday quarter earnings results comprised 14 weeks while the most recent quarter comprised 13 weeks. Consequently, Apple's record-setting revenue and profits this past quarter are made all the more impressive.

So while everyone was busy predicting the decline of Apple, its revenue grew by 17% and its profits remained strong. The consensus was that Apple would deliver about $54.74 billion in revenue and EPS of $13.45. As such, Apple slightly missed expectations with respect to revenue, but really nailed it out of the park when it came to what really matters - profitability.

Product-wise, Apple sold 47.8 million iPhones, 22.9 million iPads, and 4.1 million Macs. iPhone sales grew by nearly 30% while iPad sales increased by nearly 50%. iPod sales checked in at 12.7 million units compared to 15.4 million in the same quarter a year ago. And, adjusting for the extra week during last holiday's quarter, Horace Dediu notes that on an adjusted basis, iPhone sales grew by 37% while iPad sales grew by 60%.

Mac sales were down quarter-over-quarter, from 5.1 billion Macs down to 4.1 million, but Tim Cook noted during Apple's earnings conference call that the new iMac wasn't available for two out of the first three months of the quarter.

“We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter,” Tim Cook said in Apple's press release. “We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

Looking ahead, Apple issued the following guidance for its earnings next quarter: revenue between $41 billion and $43 billion. Apple now has about $137 billion in cash.

In after-hours trading, shares of Apple were down to $480, a 6% drop. Absurd that Apple continues to make money hand-over-fist, deliver double-digit growth across its two most profitable product lines, and the street is still disappointed.

During Apple's earnings conference call, Tim Cook noted that Apple to date has sold over 500 million iOS devices.

via Apple

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How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Write Consistently

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

Don't Anger Google

Conclusion

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COMMENTS (20)

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Write Consistently

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

Don't Anger Google

Conclusion

Written by

Comments (20)

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Well done!

Seasonal Marketing: How to Apply It to Your Business

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Write Consistently

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

Don't Anger Google

Conclusion

WRITTEN BY

COMMENTS (20)

How To Get More Organic Traffic To Your Website?

Create The Best Content You Possibly Can

Grab The Low-Hanging Fruit

Write Consistently

Guest Blog For Traffic, Not SEO

Don't Anger Google

Conclusion

Written by

Comments (20)

Subscribe

Well done!

Seasonal Marketing: How to Apply It to Your Business

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Tim Cook aborde la rumeur de la demande baisse iPhone 5, type de

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Shares of AAPL take a dive after earnings Records

PlasticJungle Promotion: Sell $200 in Gift Cards, Get $20 in Credit

Index Fund vs. Top Hedge Funds: Buffett Bet Halfway Update

Apple posts record revenue and profits; iPhone sales jump nearly 30% while iPad sales up nearly 50%