Category: Internet Marketing

Attracting Facebook Fans with Giveaways

By , December 29, 2011

Here’s my early experience using “giveaways” (sweepstakes, free prize, drawing) to draw followers to the Facebook page for LessonIndex.com (which is a directory of lesson plan resources for K-12 teachers).

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Bounce Rates: Do They Matter?

By , August 29, 2011

“Bounce rate” and “pages per visit” are two of the most prominent statistics displayed by the Google Analytics “Dashboard.”

Don’t let that confuse you: they’re not  often not relevant. Here’s why.

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Weird Characters after cut-and-paste

By , August 22, 2011

A teacher asked about ”Weird letter characters appearing when viewing [her] product description online.”

Have “Amazon Taxes” Benefited Any States?

By , July 26, 2011

For the past month, I’ve been trying to find evidence of any benefits earned by states which have enacted an Advertising-Nexus Tax Law (“Amazon Tax”). Even after appealing for help from many sources, I’ve failed to identify any benefit. Except for New York, no states have collected any additional sales taxes due to these laws, which have reduced the states’ income-tax revenue and jobs.

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As Expected, Amazon Terminated Its California “Associates” (including me)

By , June 30, 2011

As expected, Amazon.com yesterday terminated its advertising relationship with 25,000 California web publishers, including me, after Gov. Brown signed an “Advertising-Nexus Tax Law,” which would use advertising relationships as a “hook” to try to force Amazon and other out-of-state retailers to collect California Sales Tax.  I’ve posted separately about this on my separate blog for LessonIndex.com:  http://blog.lessonindex.com/2011/06/california-forced-amazon-to-stop-advertising-here/

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High Payment Threshholds for Affiliate Programs

By , May 31, 2011

I’ve recently noticed several merchants who’ve created in-house affiliate programs with alarmingly high payment thresholds. Here’s why it’s a bad idea.

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Damages From the Illinois “Advertising-Nexus” law

By , March 11, 2011

Illinois enacted an “Advertising-Nexus” tax law yesterday, triggering some serious negative consequences — while collecting no additional sales taxes. Here’s a quick summary of the law’s impact:

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Sales Tax Fairness, Advertising-Nexus Laws, and Common Sense

By , March 6, 2011

One of the “Advertising Nexus” tax bills (pending in the California legislature) is scheduled for hearing tomorrow (Monday) in Sacramento.  Yesterday, I found this editorial on the American Booksellers’ web site,  and was annoyed enough to write this reply: Read more »

Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Update (Panda)

By , March 5, 2011

There’s been a flurry of SEO-related commentary over the past week, discussing Google’s most recent algorithm adjustments, which changed the results for about 12% of all search queries.  Internally, Google calls this the “Panda” update, but most observers call it the “Farmer update” for its impact on “content farms.”

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Test, test, and test your web site again!

By , January 9, 2011

Always test, test, test whenever you make any change to your web site. Read more »

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