Viral Marketin' Guru

If you visit her site, she'll toss around those phrases that quickly let you know she's all about affiliate marketing and work from home stuff, which tends to drift into MLM and other get-rich-quick ideas, all the while repeating the words, "Twitter, Facebook, Social Media and Web 2.0."

But who am I to make fun of someone's dream? Cynthia here is taking the bullshit by the horns and turning it into CA$H! Besides, she's Certified!

Thanks to Every Sandwich for the tip.

Sneaker Pimps

No, not the cool kind, the other ones.


Unless you're just of the telemarketing mindset and you only care about converting 2% of your contacts, then you need to request link exchanges in a more personal style than this:

Hi,

I'm glad that I came across your site wheresmyjetpack.blogspot.com. You have some very useful and interesting content there. I will put a link to your site from my site, if this is fine with you.

I help run a store called [lame replica sneaker store dotcom] it's not really a big one, but it's getting there. Please have a look. If you could possibly place a small link of my site, that would be really great.

Have a great day and hope to hear from you.

When you start off lying to me, it will be hard for us to ever establish a good relationship. Clearly, you know nothing about this site, and you obviously sent this email to thousands of other bloggers. A more compelling way to prove to me that you really did find some "useful and interesting content here" might be to reference an actual post. Further, if I start driving traffic to you by providing a link to your cheap shoe store, what are your tracking mechanisms and how will I be compensated if one of my clickers buys your cheap, ugly knock-off shoes? Maybe I'm just one more tool to be ripped off by you, the way you're ripping off Nike and Puma and Reebok with your lookalike shoes?

You see the links over there on the right panel? Those are people with ideas and stories and content I don't mind being associated with. Maybe someday I will entertain the notion of an ad or two for a product or service that I use and appreciate, but I'm not running a link farm for your lameness.

Still You Need Some Graphic Seance

Thanks, "Andy". You make blogging fun. Let me guess: you are in Affiliate Marketing?

Ken Fox - Strategist! (No. 5)

What are you getting for that "social media optimization" service you pay your new media guru for? Seen any money from it? Can you trace a revenue stream to your Facebook? Have you considered that maybe your teenage daughter knows more about social media than your well-paid "consultant"?

I agree, it's good to be out there, in as many places as you can find, but you really don't need to pay someone to tell you how to set up a Twitter account and what to say in your tweets. Pretty soon, you'll have a review committee and three rounds of edits before you authorize a tweet. Just get out there and do it. Kick the Ken Foxes to the curb.


Previously in Ken Fox - Strategist!

Seven Other Places

Links can be your ticket to riches!
(Sometimes referred to as "Affiliate Marketing.")

Here are seven other places you could be right now on this great big webbed thing we call the Intertube.

1. Pork Earmarks. Speckles is out of touch and Unfit to Lead.
2. Baltimore's own M.M. McDermott explains why Gates/Seinfeld were successful for Microsoft.
3. Rick Sanchez is twitting, tweeting and facebooking the hell out of the Wall Street thing.
4. Drew sometimes strikes out. Drawing two comics a day will do that to anyone. He hits a homer with "Interview over Lunch."
5. Leave Alec Alone! "Like a bareback unicorn orgy on a cloud made of rainbow colored cookie dough."
6. "He's on the agency side, she's on the client side." (Sounds like the lead-in to a sitcom.) A new ad blog called "Married to the Enemy."
7. Uncle Sam comin' to get ya! (From my other blog, a place to indulge my other personalities, because admitting you're insane is the first step toward recovery.)

Taking Advantage of The Clueless Masses

So, let's pretend you're the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation out of Perrysburg, Ohio, just down the river from Toledo. Since 1985 you've been committed to being the number one supplier of used Tube, Pipe and Rollform Machinery in the world. Your presence in the industry has always been strong and honorable, working with companies locally and all over the world. Years ago you registered the domain name utube.com And then along comes some upstart named YouTube and suddenly you've got people on your site looking for "Fire in the Hole" fastfood prank videos, or they're searching for "hot girl dances on webcam." They want all kinds of things that you as a leading used tube rollform machinery supplier just don't stock. Yet.

Check out the search bar these guys added to the top of their homepage, along with helpful links for you to find Shakira, Blackjack, Ringtones and more. Making some cash on the side just by giving the people what they want. Go, UTube.