Although John Chow hasn’t been talked about as much as in the past, he is still considered amongst the Kings of profit when it comes to blogging.

John Chow’s blog started gaining traffic through social news site Digg by submitting an article that became popular quite quickly. He the submitted another article about how much traffic that article received, which again, became quite popular. Ever since, he has been reaping the rewards. Digg not only sent him traffic, but the visitors sent him links.

With the many links collected, Chow began creating contests. The links created by Diggers were enough to send visitors and have them become contest guinea pigs. They then subscribed to his RSS feed. As his RSS feed grew, Internet Marketers raved about how his blog went from zero to popular in just a matter of weeks. They sent him even more links and more traffic.

With the additional traffic, John Chow had it made. He began writing reviews with affiliate links attached. When his visitors bought the product, he made money. When he reviewed traffic generation sites, like BlogRush, his affiliate link sent even more traffic through pyramid schemes.

John Chow continued his quest for more traffic by holding a contest with Shoemoney. The contest was to see who could raise their feed count the most by the end of the month. Although Chow lost, his feed count increased significantly. Shoemoney’s involvement with Chow further helped raise Chow’s popularity when he asked Chow to fill in a couple of times for the Shoemoney radio show.

As marketers listened to John Chow on the radio, they clicked. Traffic was at an all-time high. Guest posts were flooding in quickly and each post receiving hundreds of comments. At this point in time Chow could tell bloggers to poop on a stick for traffic and they would do it exactly as described.

John Chow’s popularity has since leveled off. Earlier this year, for nearly a month his only posts were about eating at nice restaurants. Guest posters would fill in for Chow to carry the burden of writing articles on Internet marketing and making money. Although his eating posts have cooled down, his posts hardly, if ever deal with making money online.

Rate:

2.8

12 Comments

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Definition of racism:

Prejudice or discrimination based on an individual’s race; can be expressed individually or through institutional policies or practices.

Definition of target marketing:

Market specialization is a business term meaning the market segment to which a particular good or service is marketed. It is mainly defined by age, gender, geography, socio-economic grouping, or any other combination of demographics.

As you can see, there might be a little overlap between the two. In December of 2005 a settlement was reached in Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch discrimination lawsuit. It alleged:

Abercrombie & Fitch settled a $40 million discrimination lawsuit requiring it to pay this large cash sum to Hispanic, black, Asian American and female applicant employees who charged the company with discrimination. The lawsuit stemmed from claims that minorities were denied prominent sales positions in the store or had their contracts terminated primarily based on their race. Part of the settlement reached with Abercrombie & Fitch, in addition to establishing procedures to allow for more diverse employment, required that marketing materials - such as shopping bags, posters and catalogs - include members of various minority and ethnic groups.

So when is marketing to one group acceptable and when is it not?

First, lets look at when marketing to one group is unacceptable:

• When the group is entirely white
• When the group is anti-race
• When the group is anti-female

When is marketing to one group OK?

• When it is a specific age group
• When it is anti-abortion/pro-abortion
• When it is anti-male
• When the group doesn’t contain whites
• When it is to a nationality

So wait a second, why is marketing to entirely white groups considered racism while marketing to anything but white perfectly acceptable?
For one, white is seen as a majority, at least in the west. Thus, any prejudice or discrimination against a white man or women publicly is seen as fair game. However, when it comes to another race it is not. The same goes towards advertising to anti-male groups, or at the very least, feminists. Men are seen as a majority, not because men are the true majority (women are), but men hold the majority of powerful positions within the USA.

Going back to the Abercrombie & Fitch lawsuit, marketing to white men and women was seen as unacceptable and resulted in an enormous settlement, even though the large majority of their customers were white. However, if you have seen any of the latest McDonald’s commercials (or if you live in Southern USA, any KFC or Church’s Chicken ads) you will notice the complete lack of whites.

Although this is a huge governmental and societal double standard, this is how racism, prejudice, and discrimination is dealt with within the United States, even though within many portions of the US white is no longer the majority.

So to recap, marketing towards a less powerful minority is seen as OK, while marketing towards the actual majority will get you a lawsuit.

Rate:

2.8

7 Comments

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In the previous articles, I wrote about how to be productive by setting work hours and taking notes. This article will focus on the importance of writing articles ahead of time.

Whenever I begin writing, I just have to finish—which is why I’ve never written a book (hardy har). I can’t sleep whatsoever in between chapters or ideas.

The bad part is, I get burned out quickly. I write and then can’t bring myself to write again for days, even weeks. That’s why I work ahead. Not only does it allow me recuperating time, but it allows me to take breaks easily without the stress of falling behind.

This blog for example, I can write a month’s worth of material without logging in once to submit another. Just write articles, set them for publish at a future time, then let WordPress do its magic. Great eh? I just have to check in to moderate comments.

Writing ahead also gives me the ability for emergency articles. Sometimes something comes up unexpected; which forces me to be away for a few days, even a week or two. I could easily just not publish and let my readers suffer, or I could put our hands into the emergency bucket and grab something interesting.

What works best in my experience is writing articles ahead of time and if news pops up out of nowhere, publish the time sensitive article and save the original for later. This helps keep the blog fresh, entertaining and up to date without the hassle of writing everyday; which is great for those with a busy lifestyle.

If you are someone who wants to start a blog but has a 9-5, try writing a series of articles over the weekend and set them to be published throughout the following week. This will give you the needed time off after work and allow your blog to thrive in the mean-time.

If you have any tips that help you stay productive, I would love to hear them.

Rate:

2.8

6 Comments

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Alright, I think this is the last Entrecard contest I will do for a while. The amount of people who joined is a lot less than I anticipated, especially for 10,000 credits.

As a surprise (thanks to Chato), everyone will get something. Those who participated and didn’t win will receive 25 EC credits. Everyone should have received their prizes, except actiwiz who I can’t find anywhere on EC. So Actiwiz, if you read this please send me a message on EC!

Person - Credits earned
Prashanth - 25 credits
cybercelt - 25 credits
actiwiz - 25 credits
caroline - 25 credits
shaxx - 25 credits
jlprosser - 25 credits
chato - 25 credits
acadia - 25 credits
cotest hub - 25 credits
win entrecard credits
showmethecontest - 25 credits
Winner:
nishadha - 10000 credits

The winner was randomly chosen by PHPs mrand! Go PHP go!

Enjoy your credits nishadha… they took forever to get!

Rate:

2.8

15 Comments

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I haven’t seen this announced publicly anywhere, so I will go ahead and announce it for my readers:

Google AdSense Referral program is being discontinued on the last week of August. The good news? They are now offering up a new affiliate program involving recent buy DoubleClick. The bad news? It is only for US traffic.

Google suggests:

* Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a
moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last
week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your
ad space.
* Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create
and save all reports related to the referrals program on your
desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign
information

They then go on to state this is needed for long term to help develop Google AdSense’s quality and magnetization for their users.

More information about the new Google Affiliate program.

Rate:

2.8

6 Comments

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