Internet Babel

This is a paid post – I can’t call it a review because the mysterious Mr. Haarg isn’t giving much away at the moment, but he does say that Haarg will be an exciting new service:

Mr. Haarg is working on a new site that he promises will be an exciting development for Bloggers. The Haarg Blog itself is not giving much away in terms of what this wil be but Mr. Haarg is fielding suggestions and guesses as to what will be unveiled.

The large countdown timer on the Home page points to a New Year release for Haarg, and, like you, I can only guess as to what it will be. On the Blog, Mr. Haarg certainly shows a leaning towards creative and media related subjects, with some interesting and funny images – so that might give some clue as to what Haarg will be. There are also some general Blogging and science related posts to be found on the Blog.

Looking around the Blog, there is a little clarification on what Haarg will not be, and a few things that Haarg might be:

• Haarg could be a solution for a real problem
• Haarg could be a new communications medium
• Haarg could speed up several activities
• Haarg could cut the distance between people
• Haarg could be a new language
• Haarg could be a new currency
• Haarg could be a challenge
• Haarg could be a cool gadget
• Haarg could be a new way to write
• Haarg could be a creative thinking tool
• Haarg could be a new content sharing tool
• Haarg could be a new engine
• Haarg could be a new friend

What is Haarg going to be? I honestly have no idea because I don’t know what will be unveiled, BUT he is genuinely trying to generate some interest and interaction with readers so full marks to him for that. Appearance wise, I would prefer the Blog to be ‘toned’ down a little but he’s a got a nice concept going.

Anyway – it won’t cost you anything other than a small amount of your time to go and see for yourself just what Haarg might be….

A site that caught my eye a few days ago is TextAdMarket.com – they’ve got a nice angle on providing a hybrid CPD-PPC ad solution.

For those of you don’t know the term, CPD (Cost Per Day) is a type of paid-advertising where (strangely enough) the Publisher gets paid for each full day that they carry an Advertiser’s ad on their site. There aren’t too many CPD providers around but there has been more talk about them lately, as they have the potential to offer a regular and known income stream without having to tie-in to any long term deals.

Background

TextAdMarket started out as a CPD ‘marketplace’, where Publishers could showcase their sites/ad-slots and advertisers can bid for those slots for an agreed period of time. Publisher’s can join up for free, and advertising ‘credits’ can be purchased in amounts as low as $20. TextAdMarket provides the mechanism for bidding, the embed code to use and various monitoring facilities.

The site went live in May 2008 and to date (23rd July) just over 300 Publishers/Advertisers have signed up.

CPD/PPC

One of the potential drawbacks with such a system is that ‘unused’ ad-slots can remain empty on sites, so the guys at TextAdMarket came up with a novel twist by also allowing PPC ads to be run whenever a CPD slot is not being used. Obviously these PPC ads are just paid ‘per click’ but all revenue goes into the same account.

Publishers can opt to sell their ad slots at a fixed price, or have their ad prices rise and fall on a nightly basis, based on ad popularity and other factors.

TextAdMarket say that they work on a fixed commission of 20%, regardless of the type of advert being carried.

This all seems like a good approach to me – I’m certainly going to sign up and try it out on a few of my sites (from both a publisher and advertiser perspective).

Conclusion

It’s early days yet of course, and the site’s success will hinge on the take-up rates, and also on the quality and breadth of advertising available. However, I think it’s certainly worth a closer look and the guys deserve some encouragement and exposure for bringing a pretty novel idea to the market.

The site can be found at http://www.TextAdMarket.com

Ben at TextAdMarket has also kindly offered an ‘opening special’ coupon code – for an extra 10% ad credit on all purchases until September 30th. Code: “10-GRANDOPEN”

This has not been a paid or commissioned review – just a service I came across that might be worth a punt. I’m not endorsing or making any claims for the site, nor am I getting any fee for this. Just saying it’s probably worth checking out.

I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this type of service, and feedback from anyone who signs up either as an Advertiser or a Publisher.

With increasing numbers of affiliate networks and ad networks skyrockiting at an alarming rate, it’s becoming much harder to figure which one to use.

Overview

What is needed is a resource for new Internet marketers to give them and us a slightly more clear cut view of which ones are your best bet and which ones are not worth the time. PublisherSpot is now that resource.

PublisherSpot gives you detailed descriptions and experience notes on a variety of ad / affiliate networks. As well a rating for each one.

Here are some reviews of some of the most well known networks:
Google AdSense
Azoogle Ads
PayPerPost
Shopping Ads

Design and Layout

I really like the design of PublisherSpot; It’s clear and professional and the reviews are layed out in a simple, easy on the eye, readable mannor. I also like the fact the site has no ads; I think if it did, it would just clash with the entire nature of the site itself… Would just seem a bit out of place.

Instead, I can see each link to each network on each review page is a referral link. Which is the best approach possible for making revenue out of thie site in my opinion. People are visiting the site to see which networks are best, so if they fancy signing up to one via a link on the site… Why not get payed for it.

I do think the CTR could be increased if the logo images of the network were linked too though as people have a higher tendancy to click images I think. Depends on what the site content is but in this instance I think people would be more inclined to try and click the network’s logo.

Other than that and some minor layout mishaps that are easily fixable, the site is easy to use and looks well done.

Search Features

The search features are especially nice, being able to define exactly what you’re looking for. For example, you can search by payment method; So if you only want to deal with networks that only pay you via PayPal or PayPal included, you can search for them.

You can also search by ad creative, which is a nice feature I think as it allows you to really specify a big importance in the type of network you’re looking for. If you absolutely must have a 728 x 90 leaderboard then you can define that.

As you can see there are a lot of search options and definitives for you to specify exactly what you want. A very good thing, too much options is always better than not enough options.

Final Thoughts

I think PublisherSpot is a great, needed resource. For once a site that’s actually useful. I think it has room for improvement as most things do but it’s mostly a very well thought out site with great search features.

Thumbs up!

What’s Pingo?

Pingo is a service of iBasis, one of the world’s leading international long-distance carriers. The iBasis network is your assurance of superior quality and reliability—in addition to the most competitive rates out there.

Personally, I’ve never used calling cards, have no real familiarity with them or the core need for them. Other than to save a few pennies… meh, call charges aren’t something on my super high priority list. But passing that, let’s take a look at Pingo.com as a service, site and online based business as apposed to something I wouldn’t use.

Design and Feel

Pingo.com has an exceedingly fresh and simplistic stylistic feel to it. Much like Google or any big players online when you think about it. White background, well designed logo, standard links, a bit of graphic touch-up and a slogan. Gets pretty much top marks for me in terms of structure, design and feel. Captures that new-age, web 2.0 feel nicely, as well as looking and feeling up to date.

Ease of Sign up

No messing about here. In terms of sign up, Pingo has done well to keep it short and concise by getting your main info at the start. Gaining you as a user, then explaining the bulk when your inside.

I think this is just how you should have people sign up with a service site. You don’t want big paragraphs and tons of mandatory fields on a sign up page. Just enough to get by.

After you fill out the sign up form, you’ll get an email explaining how to login and use your account. Then, you can go login and start saving on calls. You also get a free $5 of call credit when you sign up. Incase you hadn’t noticed on the above picture

Ease of Use

You can get all Pingo’d up in a mere 4 steps. They’re as follows…

Key Points

• You can pre-program your phone so that there is no PIN codes
• You can speed dial up to 25 people internationally
• It cost you nothing to sign up!
• You get a free $5 credit

There are some nice little handy benefits you get from this service. But not too many.

Affiliate Program

Every Internet marketer loves a good affiliate program. Well, lets not be generic and use cliche phrases. But we can say, with assumed confidence that; a large amount of GOOD Internet marketers certainly love a good affiliate program. So, is there a super-affiliates dream built into Pingo? To be honest, I’ve never really been much of an affiliate marketer. But I have used a few.

Pingo say they’ll pay you up to $15 when you send them a customer. Now as far as I can see, there’s no minimum payment here. So theoretically up to $15 sounds good because you see $15. But will it usually be $15? Who knows. I don’t because I haven’t used the program yet! I had to bang this stomping review out for the guys over at Pingo though as I really was taking way too long, due to other stuff… you know. So I haven’t had a chance to properly use the program yet.

On the outset it all seems nice but the affiliate program is through LinkShare. Not saying there’s anything particularly wrong with that but I much prefer, if I’m going to use an in-site affiliate program at all. For the affiliate program to be… in-site, as apposed to external. It’s nice and convenient to have the program built in, all compact within the site’s well structured design and I think it’s a bit of a shame Pingo haven’t done it.

I think a lot of companies tend to go with the option of separating their affiliate program a little bit and send their affiliates off to new window land to explore the depths of a site which looks nothing like theirs, maybe just to take the load of their server in terms of displaying, potentially shed loads of stats a day. Maybe so they can save on costs and focus on the actual driving force of the company. Which is understandable.

All I know is, I won’t be using this affiliate program. Not just because it’s external but also because I don’t believe the service is appealing enough to draw tons of customers via an affiliate link.

Overview

Looking at the site. The company. The service and the product as a whole. I can’t really fault Pingo – they do a top job and seem to genuinely enjoy their service as much as their many customers do.

But it’s definitely not for me. On the business side of things, these guys are pros and they know how to present in a manor that draws customers. But in all honesty their service just does nothing for me. It’s one of those products that makes me think… ”I wouldn’t mind having that” but then again I don’t particular want it either.

Now with the use of the affiliate program, I think there’s quite a limited market for this product in the realm of social online marketing. On a mass scale of course the market for these guys is incredible and it’s a very social friendly product. But online, I would follow the intuitive gut feeling that this type of product/service makes most people subconsciously turn a blind eye because it just doesn’t offer that much.

It’s not that it’s bad or that the site is bad, it’s just that… the benefits of this service don’t seem great enough to want to make most lazy web users click on the advertisements.

Anyway, as I’ve clearly made clear as a clear crystal ball on crystal ball celeberation day, this service isn’t for me. The business and site aspects of Pingo are spot on though, so if you fancy giving their service a go – Click this link!

This is actually quite an interesting little review.

We all love useful plugins and this plugin actually is useful.

What isit and What Does it do?

This plugin does what the name suggests. It allows you to lookup domains, as in – it allows you to search all the main domain name registrars for a domain name whilst simultaneously surfing.

Now, you may think, why is that so amazing since you could just go to the registrars site and search. Well, frankly speaking, the plugin saves you time. You could literally be on a webpage and spot some text that you think would make a good domain name. Now, all you have to do is highlight that text and hit the keyboard shortcut which is (CTRL + SHIFT + D by default). Alternatively, you can right click for the contextual menu and hit “Domain Lookup for…”.

As you can see by the following ‘How to’ video made by the plugins’ creator Richard Kershaw, it’s extremely easy to use:

You can download the plugin here as well as reading a self-written detailed write up of what the plugin does. But, you really don’t need to know much more! It’s that simple, I’ve just explained what it is and why it’s good. Now download it!

I think we could use more coders making handy little plugins like this one. They’re especially good for FF lovers who love the little gadgety type plugins.

This is a paid review but the fact that it’s paid for in no way distorts, changes or shapes my opinions. All reviews are of my own viewpoints regardless of the fact they may be payed for.

About the site

Retireat21.com is a site some, or most of you might be familiar with or at least heard of. Being that it’s been around the review blocks a few times. It’s certainly growing.

RA21 (sorry for the tacky abbreviation) is a site dedicated to the passion of the ‘young entrepreneur’ making money online and given that I’m one myself. I like that fact.

If I was more sure of exactly what I wanted to achieve everytime I built a site, I may have built a site similar to this at some point and wish I had done.

This site seems to focus a lot on interviews and the ‘A-Star’ line-up of Internet marketers is certainly there. Take for example the interview with SEO obsessive Aaron Wall – known for his infamously good book on the subject called… SEO Book.

So what else is here other than interviews with well known Internet gurus. Well, you have; a Forum, a Blog, a Young Richlist and some nice independent articles such as the one teaching the basics of Creating A Website. With some nicely slipped in affiliate links

Free ebook anyone? How many Make Money Online ebooks do we need. Seen enough! I haven’t had the time to read this free ebook yet but at least it’s free. So I might have a gander soon. Personally, I’m never going to bother writing an ebook on the subject as it’s so saturated that Internet marketers seem to shrug any new ones off as they assume that they’re mostly recycled information and I agree. But I’m not going to pass opinion on this one yet as I haven’t read it. So, you can grab the free ebook from Retire @ 21 dot com by signing up to their newsletter. The form is on the homepage.

About the author

Michael Dunlop is the creator of the site. He’s from Sussex, UK.

You can read Michael’s full story on his very own site – here.

Design

So, the design. I… quite like the design to be honest. It’s simple, to the point, not too flashy and does the job. It may not be amazingly impressive graphic wise but is nice and web 2.0 and is very easy on the eye.

I quite like the simple web 2.0 low graphic approach. You’ll notice it’s often a big success factor of many of the big sites. Digg, Google, Facebook, MySpace… they all have simple, sharp logos, basic colors and white backgrounds. I think Facebook took over from MySpace because of a better model of simplicity to be honest.

But anyway, back to the site

Layout and Ads

The layout of this site is nice and organized. A lot of sites usually suffer definity early on because the owners are finding their feet with the site in the early stages. I know what that’s like, it can be hard to place everything right first time, it can take a lot of constant tweaking.

But at the moment… Everything seems to be placed conveniently on the site.

This site does have quite a lot of advertising. To be expected. But it’s placed quite nicely.

I think the BLOG could benefit from less ads as they still only have 249 subscribers so some of the large affiliate banners / links could be driving away potential return visitors. Which are so valuable on a smallish, growing blog within a saturated niche. It’s hard enough getting people to come back as it is, throw ads into the mix too early and you’re making it harder.

Affiliates on posts / interviews are at the bottom so not much harm done there I doubt but I would lose the one on the homepage. This should be the hook to the site not the thing that takes visitors elsewhere.

Content

A lot of the content on Retire @ 21 is made up of interviews and lists. Like a lot Make Money Online blogs or sites to be honest. But I do think the site could benefit from more home grown content.

Personally I don’t like the name. It’s a nice motto and good punchline / hook / brand-ability factor for the site but I just don’t like numbers in domain names.

But, leaving aside the name. I think with the motto that the name drives forward and the intended passion of young entrepreneurial spirit the site tries to shout out, it really could benefit from content focusing absolutely on very specific areas of making cash online. But more importantly, written in such a way that truly defines it to the site. The name is brandable so I think the content really needs to be as well.

The forum seems to be pretty lively but I think the blog could do with some life.

Conclusion

In closing… I think Retireat21.com is a solid site with some nice spirit and atmosphere surrounding it’s design and motto but I think it definitely needs some work with some better, more definitive content being made. And possibly some more media to wider spread the name as a brand.

This is a paid review but the fact that it’s paid for in no way distorts, changes or shapes my opinions. All reviews are of my own viewpoints regardless of the fact they may be payed for.

Affiliate much? This site is a creation dedicated to teaching you the ‘do’s and dont’s’ of affiliating with poker.

I know the guy who owns this site, he is also the creator of some other useful poker sites such as ThePokerBank and StudenPokerPro.

Quality Content

NewPokerAffiliate is full of quality content. Tons of articles packed with information guiding you in the right direction when it comes to site creation aimed at making cash with poker affiliates.

Apart from giving you an inside view on the benefit of poker affiliating, the articles on this site are also useful to the Internet marketing wannabe with some need of coaching.

Just check out these articles to see what I mean. Whether you do or do not use poker affiliates, I’d recommend you check out this site purely for the quality content and the benefit you may get from reading it.

Affiliate Ratings

Apart from tons of quality content, NPA also gives you a helping hand in knowing and deciding which affiliates to go with. All common poker affiliates are given an overall rating out of 10 based on their payout and support amongst other things.

Any site which gives you ratings such as these are always useful as not too many people speak out on what’s good and what’s not these days. Every market, especially the affiliate market is in need of some healthy direction.

Authority rating sites can also help shape better affiliates as companies can sometimes work harder to get the acceptance of sites with a voice. Any influential voicing can help bring them more users and revenue, so it’s all good.

Look and Feel

In terms of the look and feel of the site, it’s nice and friendly. The colors and design factors are all nice and web 2.0 and coherent with today’s standards.

More could be done to the structure and graphics to add character but on generic terms, the site has a nice theme going.

The site is on a WordPress installation and customized to feel less like a blog and more like an all rounder, but it still benefits from using WP with comments and easy article integration.

Conclusion

On first site NPA doesn’t look all that impressive but once you actually dive into the site and read some of the content, it’s apparent that it’s built with quality in mind.

The Internet really could use more content packed sites like this aimed at a very specific niche with the intention of guidance and value.

Gossimer.com is a modestly affordable alternative for web hosting and domain registration.

With hosting plans starting at just $5.95 per month, Gossimer is definitely one of the cheaper options out there. However, this does not always indicate quality service.

I have not used this service for web hosting or domain registration but on the outset they look professional enough.

There are, in my opinion better options out there in terms of value for money. I pay $7.95 a month and get all of what they offer in their $13.95 ‘luxury’ plan, 99.9% up-time, a brilliant support service and I have to say. A hell of a lot more bandwith and space than they offer.

This is obviously subjective as pricing with web hosting companies can vary up and down depending a lot on how big the company are themselves. The hosting company I am with, are very big players so I suppose they can afford to charge that little bit cheaper and offer that little bit more.

Then again big companies can sometimes treat their customers as numbers; not fully taking into account all their needs and requests. Virgin Media is a classic example.

Gossimer also start domain registrations at just $8.88 per year. Which is pretty good. I buy all my domains using Namecheap and have never had a problem with them but $8.88 is a fair price.

So going with the smaller option though a bit more expensive can sometimes be a good option. So if you fancy giving Gossimer a go… go for it!

TNX is a service for publishers and advertisers that helps you sell links for your site and helps guide advertisers when it comes to purchasing links…

Design – I really like the design of TNX, I think it looks clear and definitive and is all the site needs. It’s professional and all the essentials are in view.

Navigation – Simple navigation. Nice and easy to the average user and everything is in easy reach. I think navigation and simplicity can make or break an instant impression and TNX’s navigation is a good one.

Service – TNX does what it says on the tin. They show you stats about your site, what links you’ve sold etc. and it’s all in clear view once again. As a whole they’re a good alternative to similar providers.

Overall TNX gives you a reason to use them, they’re smart, clean and reliable and are just another option to you as a publisher or advertiser. A good alternative to for example: Text Link Ads. There’s not much bad to say about them so give em’ a go if you want to sell some links.

This review was a paid review.