Nada Collar

Tumri Cornerstore launched some time at the beginning of this January. But there hasn’t been much information about it around the place. Perhaps the most information is over at 5 Star Affiliate Programs, especially in the forum there.

The idea of Tumri is similar to MyPickList and FavoriteThingz, although from an initial look it appears to be implemented better than those two. It also seems that Tumri is marketing itself towards publishers rather than social network users, so that might help them.

Apparently for users that signed up in January receive 70% revenue share, but I haven’t been able to find out what it is now.

User Experience

One thing I found interesting was that on signing up I had to select my target audience based on gender, education level and average household income. I guess this will help target the widget, but I would have thought that this information would be better to be added when the widget is created. It would seem that I can only have one widget per account, which is not perfect if this is being targeted towards publishers who likely have multiple places (with different targets) they would like to use this widget.

On signing up the site seemed to hang, but I got an email and was able to access my account, so just some small hiccup. On signup there was also mention of a conditions for a “widget sweepstakes”, but the link didn’t seem to have anything related, apart from a small box stating that every 100th signup would give me a free iPod shuffle. I assume a signup is a new publisher (found from my widget) who creates a widget, but who knows.

Once inside the publisher portal Tumri has a very clean looking user interface and creating a widget is fairly simple, however I found that I could not target my widget any closer than a category, unlike the write-up which said I could “select or block CornerStore offers by item, brand, keywords, product category, price break, location, and many other criteria”.

Conclusion

Overall it looks like a product that could be useful with some more work. But given the apparent success of MyPickList and FavoriteThingz they are going to have to work hard.

What does it need? Firstly a blog to inform people of updates (there is a news page on the publishers section which kind of resembles a blog), secondly some decent help (any help at all would be good), and finally and most importantly the ability to actually target certain products like they promised.

View my widget here.

Well that was painless. At least the basics. I switched to wordpress using Blogger RSS Import since I was using the new Blogger and wordpress says it doesn’t support it (although I didn’t look around to see if it would work).

Simple really.

1. switched my Blogger to publish on blogspot
2. deleted all the files on my server
3. wrote a quick index.html to say I was switching
4. setup wordpress using Fantastico
5. Changed permalink structure to match blogger: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html
6. Activated Aksimo spam killer
7. installed Blogger RSS Import.
8. Imported.

The only issues I see are:

1. It doesn’t copy comment info (email addresses etc) - no big deal for me since I only have a few comments
2. I have to come up with a new theme and install anything else I had on blogger (Analytics etc)

Overall I’m happy. Just have to work on the theme now.

Update: Decided to remove the .html on the permalink. Changed custom permalink to remove the .html. Added mod_rewrite rule: RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{1,2})/(.*)\.html$ http://www.nadacollar.com/$1/$2/$3/ [L,r=301]

People often ask how to track conversions of keywords. And occasionally someone mentions that you shouldn’t forget that you can use dynamic entry of keywords into your URL in Adwords. CPA Affiliates recently posted a good example of how to track your keywords using the dynamic keyword variable in Adwords.

As mentioned in the comments of the CPA-Affiliates post, the problem with using keywords in your URL’s is that you might be showing the merchant how you are giving them traffic.

I like to use Excel to create URL’s with my own tracking information. This can work with your own landing pages and a script such as shown at CPA-Affiliates, or with tracking from some networks (such as the Shopper ID at Commission Junction).

1. Arrange your URL to have the tracking information at the end. www.domain.com/abc.php?fu=bar&sid=tracking_info
2. Paste the base URL into Excel A1. Remove the tracking variable. ie www.domain.com/abc.php?fu=bar&sid=
3. Pick a base tracking number, this number is going to increment for each keyword, and will start with some letters to help differentiate different campaigns. For example aa100. Put this number in B3
4. Get all your keywords and dump them into excel starting from C3, going down to Cxxx. Make sure your grouping still works after pasting, If the quotes disappear, after you paste, go to the bottom of your keywords (while selected), and there should be a little pull down button for paste options. Select “Text Import Wizard”, and on step 2 un-tick Space as a delimiter, and change text qualifier to {none}.
5. Auto fill your tracking numbers starting with your base (aa100). Select it, grab the lower right corner of the cell and drag down column B until you get to the end of the keywords you added in column C.
6. In D3 add **. Using Auto fill again, drag it down to match with the bottom of your keywords. Copy this whole column into F3. These columns will match the Adwords syntax “keyword**bid_price**URL”
7. This step shouldn’t be needed but for some reason Adwords won’t let me use the default bid by leaving this column empty (even though they say it works). Put your default bid price in E3 and drag it down to the bottom of the keywords. Make sure they are all the same value and not incrementing Of course you can change any keyword to any bid you like.
8. In G3 type =concatenate($A$1,B3). You should end up with your URL shown: www.domain.com/abc.php?fu=bar&sid=aa100.
9. Auto fill column G. Select G3, click in the lower right corner of the cell and drag down to the bottom.
10. Select your whole table and paste into the Adwords Keyword Editor. You can paste up to 750 keywords.

Good Luck.

There are more details on selecting different URLs for different keyowrds on the Adwords help page.

Update: Here is a template where you can setup a few things and hey presto its all done. URL Builder. It’s slightly different to my guide:

•  enter base URL
• enter default bid
• enter first (Base) SID
• enter keywords (see earlier comments with tips for pasting)
• drag (autofill) the columns to match keyword list

What is Google planning with regard to paid links? Matt Cutts has a post requesting people to report paid links using the webmaster spam report tool. The post has opened up a can of worms. Matt is stating that they would like the information to try out some new algorithm’s they are working on, but the writing is on the wall (on a side note: we need a modern version of this statement. “The writing is on the server”?)

• Either Google wants to remove paid links from their PageRank algorithm.
• or They want to rule the paid links arena with their new embedded link ads
• or all of the above.

Passing PageRank
Matt has basically said that you should not pass PageRank with any paid links. And while people have been calling Google hypocritical (since they essentially are the biggest paid link provider out there) I guess they are missing the point of passing page rank. Many large pay for a link networks out there are javaScript and hence don’t pass pagerank. They are all about the traffic. Text-link-ads and others are more about PageRank (and also traffic).

The response?
So far Text-Link-Ads have not made a comment about Matt’s post. Many people have commented on Matt’s post about the issues they see with it, but most are quick knee jerk reactions.

• Google is being Hypocritical. (yeah well, not directly but…. yeah)
• SEO’s will put out of jobs. (huh, I think not)
• April fools joke? (no)
• Penalize competitors by reporting them (since everyone does it)
• We are being asked to rat out others to help Google make money.

The less knee jerk reactions (but still negative)

• many site ONLY make money from paid links. And the links are relevant and hand edited. What are they to do?
• Google have said this is ok in the past.

And the positives:

• I’ve been waiting for this. Thanks
• Now the mom and pops can have a level playing field with big-budget stores.

Interesting Notes
The only real valid comment we can make right now is about the lack of information as to what is a paid link, how we should be using them, and what Google is planning to do with this information.

One commentor (Michele ) introduced the concept of rel=”paid” (to be honest I think it wasn’t something Michele would like, but it seems like a good suggestion to me).

Another commentor (Everett ) pointed out that hand crafted ads should be ok, but automated ones shouldn’t be. I like this, but from a algorithm point of view… ouch.

Conclusion
The idea is nice. It means that in theory relevant content is able to rank higher. But if you ask me the whole PageRank concept is broken now anyway. It has got to the point where things are popular because they are popular. Who will link to the brilliantly written page that nobody visits because its number 3000 on the SERPS? In my opinion blogs have taken off so well because of this problem. If you can build a readership by having unique opinions then you can grow, but in established markets where opinions count for less (and thus a blog won’t get a readership) it is starting to require significant time (and thus money) to get into the SERPs.

Given that, maybe Google are shooting themselves in the foot. Maybe PageRank ONLY works because of paid links. Someone who wants to get into the game can seed themselves by spending some money and then see how they go on the SERPs once they get seeded. Without the paid links they might never have bothered in the first place.

Interesting thought to ponder, but its way to big of a problem to ever really know the answer.

Update: I’ve been waiting for response from some bigger names on this one. Quadzilla has pointed out that everyone has joined his black-hat ranks. Maybe they are all sitting back to see how the ball lands.

This is certainly a form of revenue sharing that I didn’t see coming. Sonopia have just launched a DIY MVNO (Do it Yourself Mobile Virtual Network Operator).
They use Verizon as the carrier and provide a service whereby you can setup a network and receive 3%-8% of the revenues generated from the users you enlist on your virtual network.

It would seem ideal for non-profits, schools, community groups etc as a fund raiser. I imagine that will be its core market.

I can only imagine the schemes that are going to pop up around the internet for using this service. Although I suspect that the type of schemes would be - get your commission back etc - and the type of people that sign up for such a scheme are more likely to buy the cheapest service they can find (which would not be Verizon)

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reviewed the service and came to the conclusion that their user experience was a little lacking. It seems that its difficult to use their website for creating or managing a network. They will certainly need to fix this issue if they want to stay out of the TechCrunch deadpool.

I have not tried to setup a network but two immediate problems I see with their service relate to the user experience also.

1. Plans?
There are no mention of plans. I’d be interested to know what kind of plans they will offer, but I don’t want to sign up to find out. Maybe they are relying on the Group itself to inform its customers about the plans, but it would be nice for some sample plans for general users.

2. Association Validity.
How do I know that the Sonopia Group is run by who it says it is? If I got some marketing material from that association then I could assume that everything is legit. But if I just look through the list of available Groups then I could be giving my money to anyone.

I assume that the associations list on the front Sonopia page (National Wildlife Federation, National Parks Conservation Association) have been enlisted by Sonopia themselves. However they all have pages on Sonopia NOT on their own sites.

If you go to “Join a Sonopia” you see a listing for World Ocean Federation. How do you know that it really belongs to World Ocean Federation? Has someone just picked a well known charity and is hoping to cash in?

Sonopia, please make associations add a link to their own websites with news about their partnership with Sonopia. Then I can be more confident that my money is going to the World Ocean Federation and not John Smith of Las Vegas.

Mitch Harper at HarpzOn.com writes about getting more website traffic. I was reading his post today about commenting on blogs that don’t use the rel=”nofollow” anchor tags to get more traffic. It occurred to me that removing nofollow from your own blog might actually be a way to get more traffic also.

So I am going to try it as of today. As long as there is some method to stop spam it seems to make sense to give a little in return to your readers. I figure its another method of revenue sharing. And I think the whole blog community should start doing it.

Right now I get very little traffic. I comment on various blogs and get small amounts of traffic from all my comments, but I have yet to top 100 visitors in any day. And I have yet to receive a single comment. I haven’t really tried anything to help this (like all the methods Mitch is describing), mostly because I have no spare money to try the methods he has described.

Anyway, I might not have the exposure to really determine if this concept works, but hey what the heck its worth a try.

Free PageRank, come and get it! Hey, if you really want some pagerank, leave me a comment AND digg this article. That way your link will get more exposure when this story goes crazy.