I adore del.icio.us. It is a simple and brilliant service that saves a lot of time and it is free.

To tell the truth, I do not remember when I used Google or any other search engine for the last time – probably just to check ranking positions of my websites. In case I need information I can trust and find fast I go to del.icio.us and browse the website literally for hours discovering more and more fantastic resources, applications and services in miscellaneous industries.

Some facts from the history:

The website del.icio.us (pronounced as “delicious”) is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site came online in late 2003 and was founded by Joshua Schachter, co-maintainer of Memepool.

A non-hierarchical keyword categorization system is used on del.icio.us where users can tag each of their bookmarks with a number of freely chosen keywords (cf. folksonomy). A combined view of everyone’s bookmarks with a given tag is available; for instance, the URL “http://del.icio.us/tag/wiki” displays all of the most recent links tagged “wiki”. Its collective nature makes it possible to view bookmarks added by similar-minded users.

I recommend you checking these very useful resources to get more benefits from the website:

Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users

Become a del.icio.us Power User

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tools Collection

del.icio.us is one website from the list of social websites. In my case it is the most useful. I can easily do without others from the list, but I explore del.icio.us daily.

Why do I prefer it to Google and other search engines? Because it returns much better results. For instance, if I browse by keywords I also pay attention to how many people bookmarked this page. If it shows a high number of people I am sure that it is a good and reliable source. And I am sure that it is not an artificial bookmarks – digg.com (just another popular social website) is regularly criticized for its not quite objective way to feature website users’ content and news).

Summary: Well, I do not think that 100% persons share my excitement about this service, but most do, otherwise Yahoo! would not bother buying this service on December 2005.

[eminimall]

[tags]del.icio.us, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, make money online, work from home, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

I would not call my cooperation with CPA (CJ, LinkShare, Performics) affiliate networks successful (a good list of aff. networks is posted here). It is my fault, no doubt.

At the start of my online career I have started a project doomed to fail – a jewelry website. At that time I had no idea that this way to promote merchants’ offers is completely inefficient, it does not work. But the project is online and the results are miserable.

Time and experience are good teachers. First months I was disappointed with no sale from the website. Then I realized that the project (with its concept; in fact with no concept at all) is a failure as a revenue source from CPA networks.

I have learned that lead generation programs work much better than product sales – especially in the financial sector.

Another type of websites that do quite well with CPA affiliate networks are

-    comparison shopping;
-    loyalty and rewards;
-    shopping promotions.

Recently Performics have published a nice guide: Best Practices of this type of affiliate websites (pdf) I find it really useful. It is a sort of introduction to this type of websites. I wished I read it a year back.

Summary: I think (to tell the truth, I know) that these niches (comparison shopping, bargains, promotions, etc) are also overcrowded – the only road to success with such an affiliate website is innovations (as always).

[eminimall]

[tags]cpa, affiliate networks, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, make money online, work from home, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

Why CraigsList is so popular? It is so popular that it has attracted eBay to become a co-owner. My first impression was that it is a classifieds website with nothing to write home about. But it remains popular for years now. It does not go below top 10 websites ranked according to Alexa ranking system.

I have recently read one theory about this super popularity. The idea is that CraigsList is full of spam. And this fact attracts million of visitors – they know that they can promote (=spam) their services and products on the website that enjoys so many users.

Well, I do not quite agree with the theory – I know from my experience that CraigsList is not that easy to spam – your message will be deleted within minutes if reported.

But online marketers never get tired searching for the ways to promote their services and products:

To win with the Craigslist game, you need to have an effective plan upfront for optimizing your postings and ads for your local search marketing plan. I don’t actually try to target Craigslist readers with my ads, but I try to target Google instead. Yes.. I target Google with my Craigslist ads, not Craigslist readers. There is nothing wrong with Craigslist readers, but where I live Craigslist is not a household name like it is in California.. so the amount of actual readers I have for my state / city combo is dismal at best. Optimizing for Google will not hurt those advertising in cities where Craigslist has a large following.

What do I mean? Well, if you do a search for a term / keyword in Google, most likely you will at some point find a listing from Craigslist high ( i.e. first page ) in the rankings of your results. Google seems to spider Craigslist on almost a daily basis so this makes it perfect for getting the traffic you need ASAP, and if done properly, that traffic can be directed to your site where your level of exposure for your goods will soar. Google must deem Craigslist ads as relevant, as I have been listed on the first page of Google for some pretty competitive keywords in less than week.

Read the full article

Summary: I did not test the technique as I do not have anything to promote locally.

But I share the author point that if you Google a search phrase you will get top results coming from so called authority websites. CraigsList is no doubt is an authority website.

[eminimall]
[tags]craigslist marketing, traffic, links bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, text-link-ads, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, duplicate content, earn your living online[/tags]