Member profile: rocketdocket (Send Private Message)
- Name: Brian Prows
- Member since: Monday, November 3rd, 2008
- Location: United States
- Forum posts: 26
About Me:
Brian is a blogger and podcaster covering mobile and wireless technologies.
Recent Forum
posts:
Re: Thesis theme for WordPress feedback
I'm using Thesis 1.6 on my main site with wp 3.0. But I'm avoiding upgrading Thesis to 1.7 (See the DIY theme support forum for reasons why.)
Although Thesis is very flexible, it's buggy. Many owners who don't have the technical understanding of hooks and such have problems, especially with plugin compatibility and making design changes.
If you're not willing to spend time keeping up-to-date on the forum, I'd avoid the theme.
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
Re: Amazon astore
I created one using Thesis theme and promoted it for several months. Conversion was high (11%) but traffic was very low using an iframe inside Wordpress. The product links--carousels and all--at the bottom of posts pull somewhat better, but I'm in the mobile/wireless niche with low CTR's on most everything, including blog content. Saturday, June 26th, 2010
Re: Twitter Hummingbird - Is it worth joining?
The affiliate link is embedded in the short URL conversion. Automated tools of this type are nothing more than Twitter spam. Here's one I caught on Twitterdeck today:
Location: Miami, Florida
Time Zone: Hawaii
Joined: Wed 01 Jul 2009 14:51
Following: 1635
Followers: 696
Updates: 529
Favorites: 0
Friend: No
Notifications: No
Protected: No
Twitter: twitter.com/craiglutherfl
This member (spammer) had to add 200 people he's following each day for a week. Now he's spamming 700 people a day, who's only option is to block him or not follow.
These kinds of software tools identify Twitter members who don't follow back and drop them, but the tactic is nothing better than telemarketing or email spam. Twitter users must either turn off auto acceptance of new followers (not recommended by Twitter and others) or block spammers once they're following.
I wrote a blog post on best practices using Twitter:
http://im-mobile.com/tag/social-media/
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
Re: How to get 19000 Twitter followers in a few days
Twitter is becoming filled with "affiliate marketers" who are spamming thousands of Twitter users. This is nothing more than a network marketing scheme for Twitter uses trying ways to make a quick buck.
I did a Twitter search today for "Eat Stop Eat," a popular weight loss program offered on ClickBank. I found dozens of Twitter members sending out the same promotional message eery 2-3 hours:
"Eat Stop Eat - Very Popular Intermittent Fasting Program"
When I searched through the tweets of multiple affiliate marketers pushing "Eat Stop Eat," I found promotional tweets for other ClickBank products using bit.ly URL's hiding affiliate links.
Here's a guy in Mami who joined Twitter only one week ago:
Location: Miami, Florida
Time Zone: Hawaii
Joined: Wed 01 Jul 2009 14:51
Following: 1635
Followers: 696
Updates: 529
Favorites: 0
Friend: No
Notifications: No
Protected: No
Twitter: twitter.com/craiglutherfl
He obtained his 700 followers by following over 1,600 members, which means he had to add at least 200 new people he's following EVERY DAY for a week.
He's now sending out automated Tweets with his affiliate link every 2-3 minutes for multiple ClickBank products. In other words, he's spamming his 700 followers over and over again for unrelated ClickBank products.
With Twitter's small staff in San Francisco, the only way to stop Twitter spam like this is to report the person using TweetDeck or block the person from the regular Twitter interface.
Spam on Twitter--especially from affiliate marketers--has reached pandemic proportions.
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
Re: When should I start outsourcing?
Two questions about outsourcing articles.
First, how personal should the article "sound"? One example: I almost completely re-wrote one of the PLR articles offered by AB as a bonus. As I re-wrote the article, I found myself injecting personal stories or examples relevant to the article content and injecting "you," you're" and "I" a lot.
After completing the re-write, the article sounded more interesting, real and friendly vs. the original article that had few personal pronouns and sounded canned.
Second outsourcing question, which may sound dumb, but worth asking. What if you're not only good at quickly writing articles but you enjoy writing articles? I'm a blogger. I write all the time.
If my goal is to set up 50 sites in 50 days, then I understand the necessity of outsourcing. However, if my goal is 5 sites in a month or two, why not write the articles myself, avoiding potential duplicate content and launching a better website?
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Re: RSS Feed and Affilorama Theme
I don't believe there is one. Most blog platforms are designed for RSS, but not down-and-dirty websites. That doesn't mean you can't create an RSS feed using software like FeedForAll (http://www.feedforall.com/).
Could be wrong, but I'm guessing that affiliate websites don't require RSS feeds, especially the AFB method. You're trying to get the search engines to rank your pages and deliver traffic to each page based on keywords. Once a static website is created, there's no need for an RSS feed, because, unlike blogs, notifying readers of updated posts is not required.
Monday, June 15th, 2009
Re: Interested in Twitter
Building relationships on Twitter by interacting with targeted groups using the search function is a very powerful marketing tool.
Enter a keyword or phrase related to your niche into Twitter, scan tweets, then watch for pain points, ask and answer questions and offer help.. This encourages people to respond to your interactions, build stronger relationships and follow you, eliminating the need for automated, canned tools that only seek to increase followers.
Although I'm in the mobile space, I believe the strategies are sound and will work in any niche. The key is to engage people, create conversations and cement relationships.
For further information, read my "Twitter best practices" blog post on IM-Mobile:
http://tinyurl.com/qtwjag
I've also produced a video demonstrating how to use TweetDeck to implement the strategy:
http://tinyurl.com/kuly5l
Let me know how the strategy works for you. Good luck!
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Recent Blog
Comments:
Top Social Media Consultancy hit by Twitter Porn Spam!
While there's probably a third party Twitter tool that monitors and alerts you to Twitter spam about you and your brand, using the Twitter search box is the easiest way to monitor. Typing in your Twitter ID or product name will show all tweets mentioning you.
Many who use Twitter are so concentrated on increasing the number of followers, they forget that more is not necessarily better. That's why I review every new member who wants to follow me. New followers who offer no useful content and are only selling products and services are quickly blocked.
I wrote a blog post about Twitter best practices on IM-Mobile:
http://im-mobile.com/2009/05/24/best-practices-marketing-on-twitter-to-engage-your-audience/
Commented on
Monday, September 28th, 2009
The Dangers of using Social Media to Promote my Business
Sorry, Chris, my error. I misunderstood your comments.
The Twitter spam problem is growing rapidly as third-party automated tools, like TweetLater, Hummingbird and TwitterHawk, are abused by members who seek a fast buck. Twitter doesn't have the staff or systems in place to handle the huge volume of spam tweets.
True, as a Twitter user, you choose whom you want to follow, but unless you regularly check people who follow you, your number of followers increase. Soon, the ratio of people you follow to those who follow you gets out of proportion, possibly causing some of the account problems mentioned by other members.
I've blocked at least 200-300 followers whose only use of Twitter is to sell products and services without offering any useful content. Many of the followers I blocked used squeeze pages to build their email lists and market their products.
Starting around July 1st, I noticed a massive increase in the number of affiliate marketers trying to sell multiple Clickbank products. (Affiliate links are embedded in the attached URL's.) The spammer mentioned in my previous comment above is still tweeting the same one-liner pitches every 5-20 minutes.
Anyone interested in using Twitter properly to build a business should check out Marko Saric's marketing Twitter e-book and his blog:
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/ebook/whats-the-twitter-marketing-e-book/
Commented on
Friday, July 10th, 2009
The Dangers of using Social Media to Promote my Business
Chris Goddard, forgive me, but you're full of bull and don't know what in the Hell you're talking about.
I just posted a reply in a forum post about hundreds of Twtitter spammers, who are not running legitimate businesses. They're spamming their followers by sending through Tweets with hidden affiliate links to ClickBank and other affiliate products.
Here's one example of a guy who joined Twitter one week ago, started following over 1,600 members (he added 200 per day), acquired 700 followers (900 blocked him). The remainder are now receiving affiliate tweets EVERY 2-3 minutes.
This type of spamming on Twitter is no different than email spamming, and the only way to stop the spam by individual members is to block potential followers.
If you use TweetDeck, there's a spam reporting function in the program, but the Twitter staff is so small, I'm sure they're having a hard time shutting down spam accounts.
Location: Miami, Florida
Time Zone: Hawaii
Joined: Wed 01 Jul 2009 14:51
Following: 1635
Followers: 696
Updates: 529
Favorites: 0
Friend: No
Notifications: No
Protected: No
Twitter: twitter.com/craiglutherfl
You should do your homework before posting.
Commented on
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
Moderating your blog – three times when it's OK to delete comments!
The automated systems that leave comments are most irritating and deceptive. They have the appearance of actual responses (ex. "Enjoyed your article..."), but when clicking through to the website, it's for drugs or worse.
I suppose the law of large numbers prevails. If you send out enough spam and only get approved .1% of the time, it starts adding up.
Commented on
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Top 5 Ideas to Rev Up Your Sales for the Next Quarter
How true. And I'm as guity as everyone else, trying to focus on something that interests me the most--mobile telephony--while ignoring other niches and their products. Commented on Friday, May 22nd, 2009
Share and Share Alike – 4 Fantastic Reasons to Leverage Social Bookmarking
Good comments and questions from all. If you're into blogging, check out Caroline Middlebrook in the U.K.
Caroline, a protege of Yaro Starak and social media expert (especially StumbleUpon), offers a FREE course online called "Traffic Rush." The free version is a series of emails, but buying the full course upfront is well worth the money and shouldn't divert you from completing the Affilorama course.
Caroline's blog is at: http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/
Commented on
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Share and Share Alike – 4 Fantastic Reasons to Leverage Social Bookmarking
Good piece.
Here are other ways to promote your blogs, websites, Twitter, FaceBook, etc. using social bookmarking and Feedburner, Google's essential tool to create RSS/ATOM feeds
The "link splicer" selection under the "Optimize" tab within FeedBurner.com lets you select one social bookmarking site to add to your feed: Digg, Del-icio-us, Furl, Bloglines, My Web 2.0 and ma.gnolia. (Burning a FeedBurner feed is easy; just follow the directions.)
My blog feeds incorporate Del-icio-us. Every time I post to my blogs, I click on the bottom of the post and enter additional information about the post, including keyword phrases associated with the post. Then I enter my blog feed on FaceBook and the HTML code supplied by FeedBurner on my other blogs as widgets.
The RSS feed, containing all of my recent posts, appear on FB and my blog sites with titles and summaries of each blog post. Readers can subscribe to your Feedburner feed and view your stuff in Google Reader, My Yahoo and dozens of other locations.
See the right sidebar at MobileBeyond.net for an example.
When someone subscribes to my blog feed via email, they also see everything I've posted to my blogs bookmarked by Del-icio-us. Since all of my blogs are mobile and marketing-focused, readers find related content of interest.
If you want the ultimate summary of your online work, sign up at FriendFeed.com, enter all your sites, including Twitter, and you'll have one source on the Web that contains everything you've written. Friends you make on FriendFeed can follow you and you can follow them.
Good luck!
Commented on
Monday, May 18th, 2009
