Success Circuit

Normal People, Living Their Dreams!

Archive: Feb 2009

  1. Interesting Interviews

    2 Comments

    Hello everybody,

    As you should know by now, our contest is starting tomorrow. So that I have more time to prepare for the contest, I would like to show you some interviews hosted by Michael Dunlop, rather than myself. I shall choose my favourite question from each interview and link you to it afterwards.

    Bruce Livingstone
    Bruce is the founder of iStockphoto, the world’s biggest FREE image and stock website on the Internet. Back in 2006 Bruce sold iStockphoto for $50 million to Getty Images and has since stayed on as the CEO and in this interview he shares his top tips and lets us know how he has built up iStockphoto to such a high level.

    4) Since launching iStockphoto it has gone from strength to strength and has just been getting more popular everyday, what advice would you a young entrepreneur promoting their website? What has been the single biggest impact on your business with marketing?

    Communicate openly, honestly and quickly with key stakeholders, media and with internal staff. Find your audience and make it meaningful. Constant innovation and progress is crucial. Find an evangelist. Get someone to help you promote your web site and get great press about it. Keyword optimization and buying adwords have had the most impact on iStock.

    Interview with Bruce Livingstone

    Michael Jenkins
    Michael Jenkins runs one of the biggest affiliate networks on the net, in just over a year you have seen it boom into a power house for affiliate marketers and read multiple success story’s from it. In this interview Michael shares his top tips for making money online with Affiliate Marketing and gives us the scoop on what’s next for Market Leverage!

    What were your original goals for MarketLeverage.com ?

    I started and still own a company called PrecisionPlay Media.  PrecisionPlay is more of an online advertising agency and media buying company.

    When we started MarketLeverage, essentially we automated a lot of what media buying was to PrecisionPlay Media.  PrecisionPlay Media would have a group customers and a group of publishers; we would make phone calls, handle legal agreements, build creative, and manage the technology to get those two parties to work together.

    When it became clear to us that there were platforms out there that would allow us to automate that process, which is what affiliate marketing networks do, we realized that we needed to get involved in that. That is our principal reason for starting MarketLeverage.

    Interview with Michael Jenkins

    David Leggett
    David is a 20 year old blogger who in the last 6 months has shown he’s definitely got what it takes to dominate a niche. Since launching his site a few months ago he has the rank of top young blogger on Retireat21 and has reached nearly 9000 RSS readers! This interview offers some great advice for bloggers young or old!

    1) Tell us about your main project, Tutorial9 ? Why did you launch Tutorial9 ? Where are you at now with Tutorial9 ?

    Tutorial9 is the worlds most popular, most free Photoshop Tutorial site for beginners and professionals. We do not however only write about Photoshop We’re slowly expanding into offering Photography, Web, and other Design lessons as well as offering quite a few free resources for designers along the way.

    I launched Tutorial9 back in May of 2008 after 6 months of planning and preparing. I really enjoy teaching, and helping others (as well as learning), and It is my hope to transform Tutorial9 into a universal tutorial site for everything from design to flying a kite… to create a “Tutorial Bliss” if you will. For the time being, I use it to focus on my primary interest which is visual and web design.

    At this point Tutorial9 has nearly 10,000 Subscribed readers, functions as one of my full-time jobs, and brings me great joy as I get to speak with so many interesting people in the industry.

    I hope you found those interviews interesting, I certianly did! Make sure you check out Retire at 21 and keep track of it’s interviews.

    Shane

  2. Top Tips to Using Reviews

    1 Comment

    Hello, I have always stressed that just one review has almost unlimited potential. Today I am going to share some tips with you that will help you with using reviews to achieve full potential. Many people think that reviews are only good for SEO and getting visitors. Whilst this is true, the best opportunity that reviews give you are the areas that need to be improved upon for your website or product (for this post we shall speak about Website Reviews but of course it can relate to anything).

    1. Opinions – It is always good to know what people think of your website. I have noticed that many people seem to get very upset, perhaps even depressed, when somebody does not like what they are doing on their website. I believe that it is important to listen to these people, but instead of "taking it to heart" what we should all do is think about how you could improve your website.
    2. Advice – This is not the same as opinions. Advice is when the person reviewing your website lets you know how to improve your website, or perhaps your writing style. Usually their advice is good advice, but you must remember that if one person says it should be changed, that does not mean it must. A good idea might be to ask people on your blog, or twitter, what they think of the reviewer’s idea.
    3. SEO – Many people think this is the sole purpose of reviews. It is not, but that does not mean it is not a valid reason for being reviewed. Reviews give very solid backlinks to your website. Just make sure you remember that this is not the only advantage of being reviewed.
    4. Visitors – SEO is all well and good in the long run, as it helps with being found on search engines, but what is more important is the visitors. Here at Success Circuit, you (the reader) comes first. So reviews are a very good way of gaining new loyal visitors as rather than just advertising, reviews allows for new people to become interested in your website.

    What do you think about reviews? I believe that they are the best choice possible for advertising, as it is not “fake traffic”. Please share your opinions.

    Thank you,

    Shane

  3. Are Advertisements Always Evil?

    4 Comments

    You have probably noticed by now that we now have ad spaces in the sidebar. This is something I promised myself, and you, that I would not do. As we all know, there is a fairly big recession going on at the moment and we are all looking for was to make money. Now, you may be thinking that if there is a recession going on then you cannot afford to lose money. You are correct. That is why I shall help you profit!

    What we are going to do is take a look at how ads can help everybody.

    • Value – As the site is ever growing, we are currently at a low amount of visitors compared to what is to be expected in the following months. This sounds bad, doesn’t it? It is actually very good for you because it means that it is cheap! As the traffic increases, so does the prices. As a incentive for you, instead of only getting a small amount of traffic for a small amount of money, opposed to a large amount of traffic for a large amount of money. What I am giving you is the chance to ask for help at any time. I am thinking about writing an e-book just for advertisers about how to use it to it’s potential.
    • Brand perception – I have written about branding before. Basically, it is about getting out there and being known. If you have an ad with a black background and white basic text, it is not very good branding. If you include your logo or mascot, you will be more well known even if they do not click the link.
    • References – Most people accept all ads, no matter what they are. I will not. I will only accept if I think the website is of high enough quality for my readers. I am not greedy, I will not link to a really bad website just because I get paid. No. So, this is good for you as a ready because it shows websites that you may have not seen before. This also means more traffic for the lucky people that are accepted.
    • Change – This is not an important point, but it is valid nonetheless. It is common for advertisers to only buy one month and then the rest of the adverts are filled up for the next month, so they are not able to buy again. This means there is a change! Before the ads there was nothing different on the sidebar, so it got boring to look at. Hopefully the advertisers will have stunning ads which will add to the look of this blog!

    Remember, Advertising is part of the content! So I will only allow adverts that everybody will like, because otherwise it degrades the the value (not money but personal worth) of the blog and it’s content.

    I believe the answer to the title is no, advertisements can be very useful even to the reader! If you would now like to buy an ad then contact me. Also remember, we also write very in-depth reviews for you. The reviews will need another post, which will probably be published tomorrow. This will be a trial until all advertising ends, I will then decide whether it should be kept or not.

    Thank you,

    Shane

  4. The Force of Social Media

    3 Comments

    The Tweetathon last thursday, hosted by Joel Comm and Dan Nickerson, was really inspirational. Not just because of what they did for Water Is Life, though that too is very inspirational, but because they were able to do it. So, lets take a look at how they were able to do this.

    Twitter

    Well as it was a “Tweetathon” it makes sense to start at Twitter! What is Twitter? Well, Twitter is a social network but more specifically it is a micro-blogging website. This means we are able to send short messages (140 characters is the maximum) to anyone that is following our tweets. Sure, we now know what Twitter is… but how could it possibly be used to save thousands of children’s lives?

    The answer is simple. They used their initiative!

    It is commonly known that Twitter does not have many features that other Social Networks may have, but does that mean they are not able to use those features? Joel Comm and Dan Nickerson did not let this get in they way, they thought to use another platform at the same time!

    UStream

    UStream is a very useful website, as it allows live streaming of video! This is something I have not yet done myself, though I have watched many shows on it. Their team, including their technical people who do not get enough credit, made a website on Tweetathon2009.com which embedded the Ustream feed. This meant that they were able to create a wonderful website that even had twitter features built into it.

    Tweeple

    Tweeple is what the users of twitter are commonly called. You might be thinking, what do the users of Twitter have to do with such a powerful video? Well, think again! How could the event be publicised quickly? Ah, now you get it don’t you? Joel Comm and Dan Nickerson are very powerful people on twitter, because they have a lot of followers. Their followers have a lot of followers too. So it should have been obvious that to publitise an event like this all you need is people to “Re-Tweet”?  Maybe now this has been done once, many people will start taking control of Twitter in a way that could perhaps help the world’s economy massively.

    The power of Social Media can probably only be told by Joel Comm and Dan Nickerson as they, and their team, set it up and really used Social Media to the top of it’s potential. So if either of you are reading this, please comment!

    Thank you for reading and make sure you have input by commenting or perhaps tweeting about it!

    Shane

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