I got to skim through this a couple of days ago and need to read it again in more depth and do a lot of planning.

It is free, and well worth downloading.

It is totally different to Stampede Secrets which I reviewed a few months back, or the Authority Black Book which I haven’t reviewed, but I am sure many people have read anyway.

How can 3 ebooks from highly experienced internet marketers on Web 2.0 marketing and traffic generation be totally different, worthy of your time, and in the case of Stampede Traffic, worthy of some cash?

I would look on Authority Black book as a guide to building an authority site with wordpress and promoting it, which is effectively what Jack’s Authority Site Centre is all about, but they build the WordPress sites for you, and trick them out and host them.

Michelle’s Web2.0 Traffic Generation Blueprint is a step by step list of every way she promotes a website. It doesn’t get into possibly complicated decisions about deciding which site might be most appropriate, you end up generating traffic from so many different sources the odds are in your favour that you hit a good source. It should be noted that Michelle works a lot with out-sourcing, and this would be a perfect guide to give to a link builder and say “do this”, and also assign an outsourced writer to work with them.
I suppose rather than creating a mininet, it is more like a “social net” of 100s of interlinked pages on web 2.0 sites & profiles, social bookmarks and news items that eventually lead back to your money sites.

Stampede Traffic is a little more selective – you target the social networks you believe will give you the most traffic and best links, build up credible profiles, and develop “meaningful” communication with other social network users.
In some ways it is also more of an executive “Why are we doing this?” and “How are we doing this?” approach, and gives you some great basics. It is for niche marketers also looking to refine their approach.

All good reads, if you value your time I would read all of them, though I am not sure in which order, probably go for ABB, then Web 2.0 Blueprint, and if you find you need more of the executive overview, in a Marketing Sherpa style report, Stampede Traffic is ideal and extremely well researched.

Update:

Lots of well deserved positive feedback on Michelle’s Web2.0 traffic blog

The first thing I suggest you do is pop over to Blogcatalog and grab a free 7 day trial of their supporters service, so you can actually try out some of these new features (today may be the last day this is available)

Features limited to pro users (currently) include their new broadcast service, which is quite topical after the reaction to the MyBlogLog broadcast service launched a week ago.

Broadcast Messaging

Blogcatalog describes this as:-

What is a Broadcast?

Broadcasts allow you to unobtrusively send a mass message to all users who have added you to their BlogCatalog friends list.

The first thing to note is that this is based around the friends feature, and not the community feature, so if you add someone as a friend, that is giving them consent to send you broadcast messages.

Broadcast messages:-

• Don’t send an email
• Only appear on your profile
• Can only be seen by you
• Cannot (as far as I can see) contain URLs

The one thing it is missing is email notification, and possibly including the message in the email (to make it useful)

Blogcatalog does already include individual settings for every other message sent by the service.

It would be fairly easy to add one more setting to the same page, and it is quite likely that options in the code exist, though I would suggest that the default configuration would be to have the option set to off.

There are 2 reasons why it might be unavailable currently:-

• Servers – there is a big difference in server load sending out occasional messages, and broadcasting emails to 100s of people at a time. That is actually one of my reservations about using comment subscriptions on a blog, and why I use SMTP with gmail for my comment subscriptions.
• Intrusion – Daniel the lead developer of Blogcatalog, after he read my review of the MyBlogLog Messaging System, messaged me suggesting the Blogcatalog mass messaging system in development for the previous 3 weeks would be much less intrusive.

I think once Blogcatalog has some heavier duty servers, it would be nice to see some kind of selective email delivery included, and I would actually appreciate being able to include links.
Links are not stated as being allowed HTML, but maybe they can be included anyway.. I have to test it.

Shout To Shout

I could claim that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and the biggest innovation so far from blogging social networks… but it isn’t, it is just common sense fairly well executed. I am sure it can be improved using ajax, tabs and threading in some way (hmm think Gmail), but for now just the fact that you can have a conversation with someone, and actually display all the conversation on the same page suddenly makes messaging on Blogcatalog useful.

I actually had a problem grabbing screenshots for this, because almost all the conversations I have are in private, so I have just picked on Daniel, and blurred it.
This is just part of one conversation…

New Design

Blogcatalog has had a general overhaul in look and feel – now is the time I wish I had kept a copy of their front page without the annotations.

Before

After

The changes are more cosmetic than anything, and feature throughout the site with minor touches, although I haven’t looked to see if all the XHTML has changed significantly.

On the front page the major difference is the addition of the “The Blog Spotlight” which highlights people who are paid supporters of Blogcatalog. The “languages” had already been replaced by the latest discussions.

What I would like to see is an increase in the amount of categories being displayed. Some of the largest categories are fairly sidelined as far as traffic and link juice are concerned.

Supporter Benefits

One pro benefit I would like to see is the ability to change blog descriptions without them having to pass through some kind of approval process. I have tweaked categories in the past, and the changes went live fairly soon, but I would much prefer as a supporter to be able to make changes on the fly.

With the new Twitter updates being displayed, it would be good to show more than one entry as a single entry can be fairly meaningless. Hopefully the other services planned will not be in the same place on the page. Adding my Diggs or Stumbles is great, but I would want them in a less prominent part of the page.

Unfortunately some people decided to abuse things a little using Iframes and the join link, thus MBL were forced to switch the links off.

Things have now been fixed to require confirmation.

URL Changed

For those using existing buttons, you will need to change the URL because the join URL has changed.
You can pick up the new URL at the bottom of the widget page.

If spending $97 on an ebook is a major financial commitment, don’t read any further

Ok, for the rest of you lets get on with the review…

• There is no hype in the sales letter
• There is no hype in the ebook
• There is no hype in this review

Another Web 2.0 Social Media Ebook?

After you read the sales letter that is probably the impression you will have, and in fact you will still have that impression shortly after you start reading the ebook.

Here are some interesting facts for you

Pages 56 (+bonus guide on video, crib sheets and tables)

In fact those few references that were included were mainly in facts and figures like usage data.

So What is this Ebook Talking About?

Traffic Secrets

Whilst many people don’t appreciate the value of ebooks, claiming that the information is out there if you look for it, or join and participate in various forums, that isn’t strictly true.
We live in an age of information overload. Quite often different ideas and new ideas take a long time to rise to the surface, or never make it, not because the ideas are not valuable, or supported by hard evidence.

I often see “specialists” in SMO (Social Media Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) claim that their methods and expensive services can work in virtually any market place.
I am not going to dispute those claims, but that very statement tends to drown out other methods that could be equally effective for traffic generation that might be equally, or potentially more suitable for certain markets.

Traffic Strategy

The fundamental value from this ebook is that it challenges you to examine your social media marketing strategy, and optimize it for best effect.
This is nothing to do with writing better headlines, or coercing top users at Digg, Reddit or Netscape to add you as a friend and to plug your content.

Whilst Laura’s intention was to target the ebook to beginners in social media marketing, in many ways consultants in social media marketing should read it because it will place a new perspective on information and strategies you think you already know.

Professional Writing

Laura has written a lot of ebooks as a ghost writer, and this isn’t her first outing in publishing an ebook in her own name. This ebook oozes quality production with footnotes on almost every page and links to resources that back up the data and strategies she proposes.

The professional tone may also be one of its shortcomings – The Stampede Secret isn’t a light refreshing read, or suitable for people who prefer information in short 400 word chunks.

To get the most benefit you really will have to read through the ebook a couple of times taking notes – in some ways it reminds me of some of the more serious marketing reports you might receive from Marketing Sherpa.

Recommended Audience

Ideal

You are already making money, and probably think you know everything there is about SMM. You might even skim read the ebook once and think there is nothing new, but if you take the time to sit down and read it slowly a couple of times, you will pick up a new perspective.

• Marketing consultants
• Blogging consultants
• Business owners in niche markets
• Owners of Virtual Real Estate in Niche markets including blogging networks
• VCs and Angel Investors
• Researchers
• Journalists

Possible

Beginners who have tried SMM for their niche websites and blogs with little success, and who have money to invest to accelerate their learning process.

Don’t Buy It

This isn’t an ebook showing you the secret route to success and instant wealth. This isn’t something you should spend your last meal ticket on for that one chance of financial independence.

If the price of the ebook is more than you would spend on a night out, think again.

It will probably take you 3 hours to read this ebook unless you have been studying various fast reading techniques – if 3 hours of your time is worth less than $97, this ebook probably isn’t ideal.

You Can Find This Information Elsewhere

I honestly haven’t gone searching for all this information elsewhere, but I am sure somewhere among the millions of pages of content that are created on the internet every day, you would find at least 90% of this information. The value is in the way it is collated and presented.

Just as an example some of what is discussed in the ebook you could find on my blog, and potentially in more depth, especially in regards to things like tagging. Laura even quoted from one of my articles and linked through, highlighting that people should read the article, and the valuable discussion afterwards.

Unique Information

Analysis of one of Laura’s niche sites in a very competitive market (Acne Treatment) with real proof of traffic numbers from Quantcast – not just screenshots.
This isn’t a high traffic site, it is very much a simple niche website, running on WordPress that anyone could create and generate some income – I wouldn’t expect Laura to expose her most profitable sites.

Discussion of traffic strategy – some social media consultants charge $5000 per day to help you formulate a social media marketing action plan. Most of the consultants concentrate on the search engine optimization benefits, and not how to participate in social networks to find real customers.

How to Write an Ebook – whilst this isn’t one of the lessons taught, the production quality and style is something to learn from.

I am going to finish off with a few select quotes from the ebook that don’t give too much away, but at the same time highlight how much different the overall perspective of the information is.

If anything is going to hold you back in being a fore-runner in the new web, the need to measure and record every click or movement to and on your site would be the culprit. The internet is changing at such a rapid rate that controlling and metering every change you make has the potential to stall your success.

Uptight control and playing it safe is seldom the stance of a pioneer. It is the pioneer who wins in profits, fame and visitor traffic – not the followers and whiners. I am not guaranteeing success by any means, nor am I advising you to risk your life savings on some promising new start up, but I am saying that the occasional ‘play your cards or go home’ attitude is one of the keys to success.

Web 2.0 is a very creative, innovative and fluid environment. Most Web 2.0 sites cannot be put in a box and measured in any consistent and reliable fashion – they are simply too young. There is a level of intuition at launch, an element of change and growth throughout the life of the web property, and yet another level of intuition used for assessment when determining a reasonable sale value.

Conclusion

No hype, no bonus, though if I do see enough interest and sales I might write up a supplement to the ebook going into some of the topics in more depth, especially on the benefits of tagging.
I would probably make that available free to all Laura’s customers.
I may even go into some of the topics that Laura has missed – Web 2.0 grows at an alarming rate, and there is a limit to how fast you can research strategies enough to be able to offer conclusive proof.

Disclaimers are unheard of in most ebooks, but Laura takes this to a new professional level, this is just part of it.

Information within this report may be speculation and are therefore within the meaning of the securities litigation reform act of 1995 and contain verbiage such as ‘expected’, ‘anticipated’, ‘estimated’, projected’, ‘believed’ or variations of those.

I have actually been chucking a few emails backwards and forwards to Laura over the last couple of days, and I thought I would include one small excerpt.

You know you really rock! You don’t even ‘know’ me and you’ve given me so
much of your time. It’s a dying art in our world.

I am not going to include my exact reply, because it mentioned names of people that if internet marketers were actively using LinkedIn, would certainly appear between myself and Laura as shared contacts, and over the last 2 years I have certainly dropped by her blog a number of times.

This comment also shows the benefit of “paying it forward” and the value of providing information for free to eventually reach your goals.

There are quite a few expert marketers who normally charge their clients a great deal of money who I correspond with on a regular basis, simply because they have gained value from what I have offered for free.

One of the bonuses that Laura provides is some very specific email support – she states that she will answer 2 emails from her customers, and highlights the importance formulating those questions to receive maximum benefit. She is not going to exclude pleas for help, and win / win relationships can develop to extend the level of help provided.

I have always been happy to answer emails regarding the products I review both before someone makes a buying decision and afterwards, or you can just ask here in the comments.

I gained a great deal of value from Stampede Secrets. I might not realise that value immediately because I already employ many of the strategies and techniques discussed, and it is hard to quantify the effect any changes might have on my income.
Reading the ebook has certainly helped me highlight the action I should be taking to revitalise some of the niche websites I have had for a long time and hardly ever modify, because each is bringing in a small trickle of income.
Laura has helped me realise that it is possible to employ a few extra traffic strategies for these niche websites that could turn the flow of traffic into a gushing fountain.

Disclaimer:- I am one of the few people who received a free review copy of this ebook, possibly because I offered to take a look before publishing, that Laura reads my blog, and because she quoted me in the ebook. To be honest I might not have purchased the ebook just based upon the sales page. That is the value of affiliate marketing in pre-selling, or explaining the benefits of a product in an ethical manner

As you would expect from Maki, this article really does go into great depth on how to use Reddit effectively and ethically.

Reddit is a service I honestly don’t have a lot of time for, though I do have an account and welcome more friends.

I listed all my Social media memberships in my post on StumbleUpon, from which I also linked through to Maki.

Maki- congrats on the new writing gig.

To get the most from MyBlogLog you have to use it as an aid in finding blogs that are interesting, and then actually join the conversation on the other blogs. Spam message either through MBL, or on a blog you visit aren’t going to bring you subscribers, future business partners, and friends.

Cord Silverstein is one of the many “friends” I have met through MyBlogLog, we comment on each others blogs discussing various topics of mutual interest, link to each others articles and while this might be presumptuous, in a few short months I believe there is a level of mutual respect.

I have certainly gained far more from MyBlogLog than “business networks” such as LinkedIn, and I am sure I will continue to do so.

Cord really understand MyBlogLog, and whilst I am “just” a niche marketer who knows a little about blogging and seo, Cord is a marketing professional. (well OK, I used to be in marketing a little too)

He has just written 2 great articles covering the current benefits of MyBlogLog, and the best way to make the most from this community building tool.

MyBlogLog 101 part 1 covers how you should start using MyBlogLog.

MyBlogLog 101 part 2 shows how to expand your community.

MyBlogLog API – Is There Going To Be One?

Absolutely, no doubt whatsoever, the question is when.

Scott Rafer stated this in the comments of my MyBlogLog Wish List post not so long ago.

Andy, we’re doing our best to assemble an API. Thanks for your suggestions.

What Type of Data Might MyBlogLog Make Available?

MyBlogLog Directly Related Data

• The communites you belong to
• The RSS Feed address of the communities
• Del.icio.us, Flickr and other membership details
• Your contacts and their details
• Comments

MyBlogLog Tracking Data

• Recent Visitors to your Community
• Recent Visitors to your Profile
• Specific Tracking Data of each Visitor
• Historical Data

Stanley Milgram’s Theory

“No two people are more than six degrees apart”

There is no guarantee that MyBlogLog will allow access to your extended network completely, but this is the theory networks like LinkedIn and Xing are founded upon.

You could potentially have access to:-

• The Blogs your readers are interested in
• The Contacts your readers have made
• The Sites that are most popular in your community

Mashups

I mentioned some of the possibilities in my MyBlogLog wish list. Here is a shorter version

Access to OPML will allow:-

• RSS Feed Readers
• Personal Community Meme Trackers
• 2nd Degree Community Meme Trackers
• Parse Tags and have topic based Meme Trakers
• Community Widgets
• Community Based Custom Search
• Ajax Start Page

Access to Tracking will allow:-

• Visual representation of tracking data
• Pinpoint what interests your core readership
• Combine tracking data with Adsense account data
• Tracking Data Widgets

Access to Comments will allow:-

• Community Discussion
• Merge MBL comments with comments on your blog

MyBlogLog Is Still Alive?

MyBlogLog popularity certainly took a little bit of a dip over the last month but is recovering strongly

One thing I haven’t yet written about is the effect of social networking and images of readers in social proof. By seeing the name of someone you recognise in the sidebar, it shows that obviously your blog is a worthwhile read, and so you sign up.

Dane Morgan has written a great post today emphasising what I have previously stated, but also building on it by expressing the suggestion that you will see benefits from increasing the number of avatars displayed in your widget box. Whilst you may provide more exits, you will also be providing more social proof.

If You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get

Some people are going to think they are ugly, glaring colors, badly designed (I am not really much of an artist) and probably don’t work to increase joining rate.

I can’t even claim they do work, because although I have had a higher joining rate today compared to other days for the same traffic, a lot of my traffic today has been from a slightly different audience. In fact due to various posts, on different subjects, my traffic comes from different sources all the time.

So unlike most marketers, I am not going to say it has increased my signups by 100% or 300% or even 1000%, because it is not conclusive. The dataset will be too small.

What I have noticed is that the horrible green nasty things managed to remind one regular visitor that he hadn’t joined my community yet. I have a lot more RSS and email subscribers than MyBlogLog community members.
But that one new member after 10+ visits suggests that their might be a benefit in using them.

I am also tracking based on page location and page, and you can even do that with just a small change to a template in WordPress, plus a pro Mybloglog account.

Here is the code I used for the 2 starbursts

<div style="float:left;"><a href='http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/join_conf.php?ref_id=2006112106033602&ref_method=s&ref_er=left:<?php the_permalink() ?>' title='Join MyBlogLog Community'><img src='http://cdn5.andybeard.name/wp-content/uploads/mbl200.gif' alt='Join MyBlogLog Community' border="0" /></a></div>
<div style="float:right;"><a href='http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/join_conf.php?ref_id=2006112106033602&ref_method=s&ref_er=right:<?php the_permalink() ?>' title='Join MyBlogLog Community'><img src='http://cdn5.andybeard.name/wp-content/uploads/mbl200.gif' alt='Join MyBlogLog Community' border="0" /></a></div>

Notice “left:” and “right:” plus a little php for the permalink being used as a long tracking reference. Make sure you change the ID number to your own.
It is not highly accurate, but it does dive me an idea of which page people are clicking on the join button, which at least gives me an idea of traffic source.

Here are a whole load you can use, license is GPL like everything so you can use them wherever you like, modify them etc, though I would love a mention.

If you create some graphics of your own, please ping me so my readers can also come look and possibly use your creations as well.

There is a good reason I include a quote from Dane Morgan on my about page. It is not just because it was complementary, but because I know he is a very smart cookie, that has been around the block a few times with all kinds of affiliate marketing. He is vastly more experienced than I am.

I am a marketer and also like many online marketing tpes, I love tracking of all kinds, because it helps me with my business. Millions of dollars are saved each year by smart marketers using various forms of tracking and split testing to improve their Adwords performance.
If you are running Adsense, again you should be tracking and testing different things. Having some idea of who is clicking an Adsense advert such as an IP address is vital if an advertiser complains to Google about click fraud.

It also should be noted that many of the largest advertising networks are also lumped into the exact same “parasite” barrel as it seems MyBlogLog has done, but at least Dane has managed to get something corrected.

Dane knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, so if you have any questions, dont hesitate to ask him.
Continue reading Is MyBlogLog a Parasite over on Danes blog for full details.

I am very much pro MyBlogLog – most people are very much pro Google and Amazon as well, and they collect heaps of data about what you do on the internet.