I bought the most recent iPod touch model a couple weeks ago and immediately started trying out new apps, and surfing the web using my wifi at home. The iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone without the phone so its got almost everything I would get from a smartphone. When I have gone out I try to connect wherever I can using wifi, and have even been checking into places on Foursquare, Gowalla, and Whrrl. I’ve been pretty satisfied with the amount of free wifi hotspots I’ve been able to find and use. A lot of places where I would want to use a mobile device have wifi already. I still have to carry my old phone around too, for calling and texting, but the iPod touch comes out of my pocket much more often than my phone.

I’ll be looking into getting an Android smartphone in the coming years, so I can experience both the Android and iOS worlds. I hope I can eventually find a mobile plan that is more data centric, but I may eventually just give in and pay for the regular full talk, text, and data plans, although I don’t know if I can get over the fact the my talk and text will always be under utilized. I feel that I am almost getting the full mobile web experience with just my iPod touch–Almost. I still see the need for a single mobile device that merges phones and computers and I still crave the always connected nature of a true smartphone, but for now my appetite is satiated.

I was very excited to find out, however, that Google actually started to pass along this information in their referral URL parameters a little over a year ago. The URL format they said they would start using in their post announcing the change looks like this:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

so each of the URL parameters are:

sa=t
source=web
ct=res
cd=7
url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm
ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN
rct=j
q=flowers
usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w
sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

The “cd” parameter is the one that shows the rank position of the link the visitor used to get to your site.

This information is very useful not only because it saves time in having to check rankings yourself, but it actually tells you the exact position that the given visitor saw. One drawback to rank checkers or just manually checking a rank is that you can never be completely sure if the rank you get reported back is what actual visitors to your site experienced because different data centers could be presenting different results and with Google personalized search any given searcher’s SERPs could look different as well. So not only is the process simplified by getting this piece of information from the refferer URL, but the data you are getting is much more accurate than from scraping or manually checking.

Alas, it appears that Google doesn’t provide this information for every visitor. Shortly after Google’s post on the subject Omniture reported that this data was only shown for US searches and was currently impacting only about 10% of all searches. I think now, a year later, Google may be showing it more often but from my experience it is still a minority of searches.

Once I start to look closer to the data I’m receiving I’ll be posting more exact numbers on this along with other interesting data I’ve been collecting.

So this isn’t something that happens every day.  I got bit by an Ostrich! That Ostrich in this picture  was leaning over the fence about to bite me.  It bit me on my shoulder right after the picture was taken.  Fortunately, I wasn’t injured and it didn’t even hurt. Unfortunately, this is the best picture I have of the incident. If only the picture were taken a second later we might have gotten the perfect shot.

John Reese then responded with a post of his own defending himself and other internet marketers. Before I go on, I want to distinguish between the types of internet marketers I’m talking about, because the label “Internet Marketer” can be applied to many different groups although many people may fall into several different groups. The internet marketers I’m referring to belong to the type of marketers that teach internet marketing to others, have huge opt-in email lists, usually use squeeze pages and long sales pages to sell their products, but actually sell legitimate products that have provided real value to their customers. Some of them sell ebooks, but some of them don’t. Also included in this group could be those who have learned from these gurus or use the same strategies but have made their money in other niches.

I do find it somewhat amusing that it has only been fairly recently (within the last year or so) that many of these internet marketing guru types have really started to look into the whole social media thing, although many of the top social media sites have been around for several years already. My guess is it’s because they were busy making money while the early adapters of these social media sites were building the community around these sites. It is only now that these social media sites are going more mainstream and the value of the networks on these sites are rapidly growing that these internet marketers have taken notice. Since the industry is a pretty close knit one word has been spreading.

I don’t think this is cause for alarm, however. The nature of social media lends itself well to the idea of permission marketing. Those who are interested in a given topic or are looking for a certain product or service actually want to be marketed to, because they want to find a solution to their needs and wants. But users have the option to opt-in or opt-out of any given marketing message. As John stated in his post:

Last Time I Checked Twitter Used A ‘Voluntary’ Messaging System
And completely aside from the points I just made, Twitter works by having users opt to follow other users — and they only see their tweets after they have voluntarily chosen to follow that person.

Marketers who are too pushy or spammy will mostly be ignored and in the long run will not succeed. Internet marketers who market their products to the social networks online actually add value to the networks, because they are offering solutions. These internet marketers are coming not to spam the networks but to participate and add value.

These internet marketing gurus know the permission marketing game well. Many have been successful with email marketing, which is the epitome of permission marketing. Prospects must first give permission to be marketed to by providing their email. If the marketer creates too much noise and not enough value, subscribers will opt-out. Social media is different than email marketing in many ways, but the idea that you have to provide real value in order to be listened to for any extended period of time still applies, and the smart marketers know this.

Social media is too big for any serious internet marketer to ignore. I believe that its rise in popularity will encourage more transparency among internet marketers and will ultimately be good for both the internet marketing industry and the social media websites they use. Marketers who just hide behind a sales page won’t be as successful as those that engage and interact with their audience and build real relationships with their customers and prospects. The honest internet marketers who have helped thousands of people with their online business will continue to succeed by leveraging social media. The scammers and spammers won’t last because there will be an easily accessible public record of their dishonesty. As more of these internet marketing gurus begin to use social media more often, through participation on the social media sites, blogging, live web casts, and other similar social activities a public record will be created for anyone to evaluate and it will become more clear who has real value to offer and who is just hyping up a bunch of B.S.

It is unfortunate that John, who is one of the honest ones, got misclassified, but this whole story is a great example of the power of social media. Since John was actively involved in both Twitter and blogging he was able to defend his reputation and make a statement. I think we can all look forward to more public discourse from John and many other of the top internet marketing gurus.

This past week we launched our newest product at DotComSecrets (my employer) called Affiliate Evolution. I haven’t blogged about it yet so I wanted to do so now before the price goes up from its discounted launch price, in order to give you time to get your own copy if you wanted to check it out. The price is only $10 but it will be going up on Tuesday, June 3rd.

As you will read on the sales page the product teaches a business model called the commission bump. When promoting products as an affiliate Russell has used the commission bump several times in the past to “bump” his affiliate commission up from what is being paid out in usual affiliate commissions in some cases to even more than the product is being sold for.

Russell gave me a brief explanation of exactly what the commission bump was last week, and just from the little he told me about it I knew this launch was going to be a big success because for only $10 dollars those who acted quickly would be getting a bargain. Having the knowledge of how to effectively implement the commission bump can bring in thousands of dollars with just a few little tweaks to your affiliate marketing campaigns. This is a product that could have easily been sold for $100 or more.

I got a chance to listen to Affiliate Evolution earlier this week and it is one of the best marketing recordings I have ever listened to. Not only does Russell reveal and explain the commission bump model, but he gives out a lot of great marketing and business advice beyond just the commission bump. It also comes with some other great bonuses, which I admit I haven’t gone over yet, but I am sure are of top quality given that it’s coming from Russell.

I may be biased in my opinion of Affiliate Evolution because I work for Russell, but even trying to look at this product as objectively as possible I think this would be a great buy for even ten times the price it is being sold for right now. I’m not the only one that has good things to say about it. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from those who have already bought and listened to the recordings.

The launch has already been a success so whether you buy it or not won’t really make much a different to us, but I know it will make a big difference to you. You can click here if you’d like to get a copy for yourself of learn more about Affiliate Evolution.

There are two solutions to the problem:

1. Turn off the Visual Editor in your user options

2.  Keep Visual editor on but switch to Code mode when posting YouTube embed code

Turning off the Visual Editor

What seems to be messing up embeded YouTubed videos is WordPress’ Video Editor. The simple solution is to just turn the visual editor off. To do this simply go to Users -> Your Profile,  then uncheck the box that say “Use the visual editor when writing”. This may be a hassle if you want to use the visual editor to edit the post or even edit other posts, because you would have to keep turning the visual editor of and on. The other solutions is to…

Keep Visual editor On But Switch to Code Mode When Pasting YouTube Embed Code

To do this just write your post as you usually would, but wait until you are just about ready to publish your post to insert the Youtube video. When you have done everything except insert your Youtube video, just switch to Code mode (click on the tab next to “Visual” just below the Title box), and paste your Youtube embed code while in Code editing mode. Then click the publish button without going back to Visual mode. It is important that you do this very last, because if you go back to Visual mode your Youtube embed code will get messed up by the WordPress Visual Editor.

So, basically just avoid using the Visual Editor if you don’t want your embeded Youtube videos to get messed up. If you need to ever go back and edit a post with an embeded YouTube video make sure to re-paste the emded code while in Code mode if you use the Visual Editor to edit the post.

I plan to upgrade to WordPress 2.5 in the coming weeks so if there is simpler solution or if the problem has been fixed in that version I will let you know. Please comment with your own experience if you have already used WordPress 2.5 to post Youtube videos.

Important Change to URL Policy Enforcement
Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception. Please adjust your URLs accordingly when creating new ads.

When I first noticed this I was a bit concerned, thinking that the rule applied to the destination URL you enter within your Adwords account, which isn’t necessarily the landing page that users land on. As I read more I was much relieved to find out that it actually only applies to just the landing page that users end up on. So the new rule basically means that whatever users see displayed below your ad, should be the same as where they actually end up. This rule makes a lot of sense and I do agree with Google‘s reasons for implementing it, “efforts to present relevant results“, it will however affect a lot of people. John Jonas has written a great post about how to deal with these new rules.