Google Has PAC MAN!
Posted by Amateur BlogsHave you done a Google search today? If so, you may have noticed that they have PAC MAN on their home page. And it works!
Today is the 30th anniversary of PAC MAN – that’s why Google has it up on their Search page.
How to Play Google PAC MAN
Just click on “Insert Coin”, wait a few seconds, and the game will start. Click your mouse on top of the yellow dots near your PAC MAN player in order to “eat” them. You’ll need to click on top of the yellow dots (really fast) in order to guide your PAC MAN player around the game board.
To get extra points, gobble up the blue PAC MAN figures and the pink circles. However, you need to AVOID the PAC MAN players. If one of them eats you the game is over.
My high score thus far is 3,370. See if you can beat it!
The Tribe Has Spoken
Posted by Amateur Blogs
I just finished reading several responses to a Darren Rowse post titled “The Third Tribe” in which he announces a new service he’s providing called, interestingly enough, “The Third Tribe.” His business partners for this venture are Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone.
To put it simply, Darren says that there are currently two tribes in internet marketing:
Tribe Scummy: these are the guys that sell useless products that promise to make you rich overnight. They know their products won’t do this but that’s not a concern; it’s all about getting you to purchase their product(s).
Tribe Chummy: these are the folks that live for the interact. They’re interested in building online relationships or “communities”. Making money online doesn’t appear to be a primary focus. Or, if it is, they’re failing at it.
So, where does The Third Tribe fit in?
They fall somewhere between Tribe Scummy and Tribe Chummy. They use other words in their sales pitch but the underlying message is that their new program falls between the two aforementioned internet marketing extremes – in other words, their new program is a “best fit.”
I can’t help but think of the fairy tale “Goldilocks And The Three Bears”:
At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.
“This porridge is too hot!” she exclaimed.
So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.
“This porridge is too cold,” she said.
So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.
“Ahhh, this porridge is just right,” she said happily and she ate it all up.
According to Rowse The Third Tribe is that third bowl of porridge. Pull up to the table with your credit card and have a bite.
In return you’ll receive:
-A monthly audio class or webinar
-A copy of “The Quick Start Guide to Making Money Online”
-A 3+ hour seminar series on “Building a Business Around a Blog”
-Forum access
-2 monthly live Q&A calls with one of the Tribe experts
-Special deals and members-only discounts on products
I’m guessing most of this will teach you how to make money in a non-Tribe Scummy way and the forum/Q&A calls will let you interact in a non-Tribe Chummy setting with other people just like you who want to know how to make money online by blogging.
And that leads me to the article written by Papa Bear himself titled The Third Tribe More Useless Blogging Nonsense. You see, Griz asserts that the audience for this new program isn’t really internet marketers, it’s bloggers. Griz says “Selling soap to people looking for soap is internet marketing.” He also says (and this is key) “nothing they espouse will teach a soul how to A) Succeed in a non blogger/social traffic niche – ya’ know, that big part of the internet where the visitor has never heard of “Affiliates” or is even remotely interested in learning how to be a Blogger – they just dropped in looking for a George Forman Grill.”
Bingo. That’s what prompted me to write this post. What Griz said really resonates with me. Why? Because I’m making the transition from a blogger to something closer to an internet marketer. This blog is an example of the start of that journey. It’s a blog about blogging. I started out in 2007 with high hopes that this blog would bring in enough money (in a short time) to allow me to purchase a new car. Yup, that’s how much I’d bought in to the Tribe Scummy hype.
I then started listening to Tribe Chummy people and thought that building RSS feed subscribers was the way to go. I didn’t really understand how that was going to translate into a paycheck but the A-listers kept bragging about their subscribers and heck, they were making LOTS of money. Clearly popularity must be the key to making money online.
I floundered like that for over a year before I discovered Griz, Vic and Court in 2008. Because of them I now have niche sites that provide information on specific products; sites that bring in passive income because of the amount of targeted search traffic they receive. But I’ll tell you, I was so entrenched in the “blogger” mentality that I sometimes forgot that my sites no longer catered to bloggers. Here’s a great example of that:
Near the end of 2008 I ran a contest on my site for a free gift. To enter the contest you had to write about my site on your blog and link back to the site. I even provided everyone with the anchor text to use.
The contest was a complete failure.
Why? Because I’d forgotten that my visitors weren’t bloggers, they were people who’d come to the site looking for specific products. As such I never got one properly anchored backlink. Heck, most of my visitors had no clue what I was talking about. You see I had a bunch of people looking for soap and I was treating them like bloggers.
If The Third Tribe wants to help others succeed it will provide a structured program that teaches proven, repeatable internet marketing skills.
Like Griz’s How to Make Money Online for Beginner’s site or Court’s Keyword Academy, which teaches how to select keywords and set up sites that make money online and generate search traffic.
These guys teach you how to sell soap to people who want to buy soap. Not how to sell soap to people selling soap.
In closing, The Tribe Has Spoken. It’s time to leave Blogger Island, enter the world of internet marketing and start making money.
Are You Making Money With Twitter?
Posted by Amateur BlogsIt seems that everybody and their cousin is talking about “How To Make Money From Twitter.” Apparently, there are guys out there racking up because of Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, I occasionally use Twitter and find it beneficial. But I basically use Twitter for two reasons:
-to keep up with local political issues
-to get a snapshot of local news events
For example, a few weeks ago I used Twitter to discover there was a car chase in progress on a busy street in my area. I used Twitter to get almost minute by minute updates on this event, thanks to the local news stations Twitter account. When the guys in the car ditched it and started running on foot, wildly shooting at cops as they ran, because of Twitter I knew where they were, and was able to alert my co-workers who commute near that area.
Additionally, when a contentious budget bill was being discussed in session by our state legislators, I was able to determine which politicians supported it.
That’s how I use Twitter.
As for making money with Twitter . . . .
I assume the guys making bank with Twitter are serving up links that take people to landing pages. Or perhaps their links take people to websites that are pimping affiliate products. Or, better yet, perhaps the links take people directly to a purchase page. Perhaps I’m missing something but if I click on a link and it takes me to one of the aforementioned places, I don’t make a purchase. Why? Because I use Twitter on my mobile device and I never purchase anything via my PDA. So if a Twitter link takes me to a page which gives me information about a product that I’m interested in, I’d be more apt to wait until I get to a PC to make the purchase. I don’t go back into Twitter to do this – I simply go directly to the product’s page.
I guess you could say that the person who sent me to the affiliate page actually did so via Twitter. It’s true, if I hadn’t clicked on the link I wouldn’t have ended up on the affiliate page. However, whenever this happens to me I never end up actually purchasing the product. I’m not sure why – it may be because the affiliate product isn’t really what I was looking for. Or it could be that I primarily access Twitter from a mobile device and I don’t make purchases via that device. Or, since there’s a time lapse between clicking on the link on my mobile device and later accessing the page via my PC, it could be that my “impulse” to purchase the item has gone away.
So, my question to you is, Are You Making Money With Twitter? If so, what the HECK are you selling? Do you send readers to landing pages that provide more information about a product? Are you using Twitter to build mailing lists? I’m not being facetious, I really want to know how people are doing this. I mean after all, you only have 140 characters . . . .
Hit me up in the comments section.