Miscellaneous: Niche Marketing: Searching for a Profitable Niche
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Identifies a niche marketing strategy and outlines the steps in identifying a potentially profitable niche on the Internet. Suggests (1) look to your own skills and knowledge, (2) list keywords in these fields, (3) assess supply and demand for keywords, (4) determine PPC prices of keywords, and (5) survey the competition. Date: Jun 8, 2004, 20:51 PST"

Ads and Affiliates: Do Affiliate Websites Really Work?
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Concludes that it is possible and realistic to build an affiliate site that generates hundreds of dollars per month. But strongly recommends Ken Evoy's Site Build It! to improve chances of succeeding. Date: Jun 2, 2004, 10:30 PST"

Site Promotion: Organic Search Placement is Vital
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Only half of searchers in a study by Enquiro even looked at sponsored links (Pay Per Click ads), making it all the more important for marketers to rank high with organic or natural search on their keywords. Date: Jun 2, 2004, 01:47 PST"

Conversion: Tweaking the Landing Page
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Split-testing results from the SonicMemo landing page show that testimonials with clickable links tend to lower the conversion rate since those links encourage people to leave the landing page. Making the links inactive raised the conversion rate from 2.9% to 4.1% Date: May 26, 2004, 11:03 PST"

Ads and Affiliates: So-called Contextual Ad Networks
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"While many ad networks boast of "contextual advertising," the truth is that most don't have enough advertisers to really achieve this. The current winners in real contextual ads on both search sites and content sites are Google and Overture. Date: May 26, 2004, 10:55 PST"


Upcoming MSN Search Engine To Filter Out Web Spam
From: www.webpronews.com

"Microsoft has unveiled their new web spam filtering project at Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View. The goal is to have their new filtering technology incorporated within their new search engine when it launches later this year."

Traffix To Acquire SendTraffic
From: www.webpronews.com

"Direct marketing company Traffix is set to acquire the rights to SendTraffic.com, a search engine marketing firm. SendTraffic provides full service search engine marketing solutions to over 100 clients. SendTraffic also maintains "Certified Ambassador" status with Overture, and is a member of the Google Research Board."

Teoma Search Apparently Allows Mirroring
From: www.webpronews.com

"With thanks once again going to (http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/2004/06/is-teoma-experiencing-hiccup.html)Andy Beal , WebProNews has discovered a bad case of spam on Teoma's search engine results. A search for the keywords "company names" finds that one site has several mirrored listings in the resources section."

Google Considering RSS Support
From: www.webpronews.com

"Because there are two formats for web feeds, RSS and Atom, there is a battle to see which becomes the industry standard. On the whole, RSS seems to be the preferred format, and therefore the perceived industry standard. However, in April of 2004, Google dropped RSS support in favor of Atom."

Overture Australia Signs Deal With Australian News Sites
From: www.webpronews.com

"Yahoo-owned Overture has signed a deal with News Interactive, which is the digital outlet of News LTD, an Australian news conglomerate. The deal calls for Overture to provide advertising and search services to News Interactive and its subsidiaries."


Car Dealers Feel Net Effect
From: www.wired.com

"Auto dealers have been forced to deal with a new animal -- the Web shopper -- and are changing their sales strategies to compete. By John Gartner."

Smut Sites Fear Credit Crackdown
From: www.wired.com

"Thanks to skittish companies, it's getting harder than ever to charge users for all those $19.95 monthly memberships. Webmasters fear Visa could be the next to cry uncle. By Randy Dotinga."

Half-Life Code Thieves Nabbed
From: www.wired.com

"Game developer Valve Software says authorities have arrested multiple suspects in connection with the Half-Life 2 code theft. The game code was stolen and posted online last year. By Noah Shachtman."

Nokia Launches a Flipping Phone
From: www.wired.com

"Nokia unveils new phones, including its first mainstream flip model. Also: Mitsubishi's former president gets arrested.... Univision sues Nielsen Media Research.... and more."

Nintendo Changing Game Plans?
From: www.wired.com

"The president of the Japanese video-game console maker says it's not enough to dazzle gamers with badass graphics anymore, so the company will try something different with its next generation of machines. By Cydney Gillis."


More to the Web Page Than Meets the Eye
From: webword.com

" Steve Outing -- "Some major sites have responded to the problem by trimming back the clutter in the last year. But perhaps there's a solution in the concept of hiding content behind layers -- having lots of content on a home page, but much of it not being visible until users pass a mouse over a trigger, which reveals what's underneath. This seems a logical way to reduce the news home-page mess."

Read more...

(Thanks for the submission Dano!)
"

A cup of coffee, please
From: webword.com

" The latest Gotomedia newsletter discusses about caf testing: "Need to test your product or service with limited cash to burn? Caf testing - the new low-calorie alternative to traditional market testing - can yield results that taste great."

Read about it!

(Editor's comment: Fantastic idea!)"

Nokia phone sales plunge
From: webword.com

" The Age -- "Nokia has been losing ground to all other major cell phone makers, a survey by market researcher Gartner Inc. has said, adding that the Finnish company is suffering from a lack of catchy designs, innovative new models and partnerships with operators."

Do we believe what Gartner says, or do we look deeper? I suggest we look deeper. Daniel Szuc has suggested that Nokia usability has degraded. While I don't think it has degraded I do think that Nokia phones are getting less and less usable in comparison to other phones.

Sidebar: Measurements of usability are often highly subjective. They are also highly dependent on context, and relationships between other comparable products and services. We tend to judge the usability of all e-commerce web sites in relation to, for example, Amazon. When you raise the bar for one major site you raise the bar for all other sites. When you talk about usability, you often need talk about how one thing compares to something else. That's how users work. The conclusion is that usability is hard to objectively and absolutely measure, but if you understand the context and landscape, you can still do a good job measuring what you need to measure.

Daniel Szuc also thinks that SmartPhones might be eroding the traditional phone market, thus hurting Nokia. From what I know, the SmartPhone market is small but growing rapidly. My discussions with mobile device experts make me think that Daniel is on to something. SmartPhones are going to start seriously eating into sales of traditional phones and PDAs.

Read the article...

Another version, if you care.

"

Handling Email Overload: The Contact Form
From: webword.com

" People like to talk about dealing with email overload. Kottke brings up the topic, again.

First, before you give away your email address, you can "force" or "ask" users to read an FAQ, or disclaimer. You can tell them what to expect and what the rules are. Basically, the idea is to manage expectations. Second, there are probably some good ways to handle contact forms better than we do now. I already mentioned adding disclaimers. You could also add priority codes (perhaps as a drop down or radio buttons). One approach that I think is worth thinking about, mainly because it is unique, is to let users know just how busy you are at the time they are going to send you an email. Moock.org uses a color coding system to let users know how busy he is. Green for "I'm kind of free" to orange for "I'm really busy, but not completely buried" to others. As long as the color coding system makes sense and is clearly explained, this is a good idea I think. I use color coding all the time with my email. I set certain colors to certain people and it makes email scanning much, much easier.
"

Remote Control Anarchy
From: webword.com

" useit.com -- "The six remote controls required for a simple home theater illustrate the problems caused by complexity and inconsistency in user interfaces."

Read the article..."