Jack Spirko has knocked together an interesting site where your story can appear on the front page because it is “hated” and I feel the idea is worthy of a mention.

You can see that currently the hated stories seem to only appear in the sidebar – I would love them to be integrated with the main results by default with some CSS differentiation, with “reactions” positive or negative to qualify for the front page.

Some things with the site certainly need improvement:-

• Permalinks need to be rewritten with mod_rewrite
• I like the love and hated part of the profiles, because you can add some HTML – I think many people would appreciate a simple HTML editor to be made available, there are plenty of simple javascript ones that can be applied to any text area.
• Blogs – there wasn’t a way to list blogs on the social media profile (my profile is an example) – Jack’s is much more interesting for SEOs ;)
• Tools
  • Bookmarklet – much easier to use than visiting the site
  • Javascript vote counter
  • Inclusion on popular bookmarking plugins such as Sociable (Joost’s version)
  • Feedburner Feedflares (with vote count and comments), maybe based on what Hamlet has done for Sphinn
• More submissions – some submissions are currently fed into the site from feeds
• Very clear rules, especially on things like self-promotion

I don’t intend to write about every new social news site that comes along, but Jack is a regular reader, and I enjoyed the new “twist” that he has added with this one, plus it is more links for your social media starfish, cross-promotion or whatever you wish to call it these days.
I wouldn’t expect a huge amount of traffic, I was member 99, but it does seem to be a site with quite a few dedicated users, and very few abusers.

Jack wrote more about HatedOrLoved.com over on his blog, and you can check it out here for yourself.

Note: Jack plus his other partners are advertisers here on http://AndyBeard.eu with their Marketing Ice site, but I actually had the whole article written before I even thought about that – a visit to Jack’s blog jogged my thoughts that I should add some disclosure.

Here is a challenge: I would love this post to be the most hated ever ;) That would only take 10 haters, compared to 21 “loves”

Ebay have now launched their own Social News site to highlight the weird and wonderful best items for sale on Ebay, past and present.

What is strange is that it doesn’t appear on their community “sneak peek” though it is still in beta.

There also doesn’t appear to be any mention of it on the Ebay blog.

How much traffic a site like this could drive really depends on how much Ebay decide to promote it, but it if you are a regular on Ebay, it might be a good idea to invest a little time in building up both your profile and those of your products.

Valleywag was a little critical, saying they are copying Digg and Craigslist but considering Ebay already own Stumbleupon, this was a logical direction to take.
I wonder if they might integrate the 2 in some way, allowing you to Stumble the Best of Ebay.

As the Sphinn user base increases, finding the wheat among the chaff becomes more time consuming.

In the future Sphinn will allow some sort of filtering based upon your friends, but what can you do now to maximise the signal to noise ratio?

The Front Page Of Sphinn

This is an obvious stop, and hopefully it won’t be filled with “made For Sphinn” articles every day.

Sphinn Greatest Hits

Eventually this will contain a superb overview of the online marketing industry, though as Sphinn is still very new, a lot of the current top posts are related to Sphinn.

Sphinn Upcoming Most Popular

I found a gem from Danny Sullivan in a comment and wanted to highlight how much time this can save.

… I strongly recommend scanning What’s New and then resorting it by Most Sphinns So Far:

http://sphinn.com/upcoming/mostpopular/

You’ll quickly find some gems that have been spotted by others over time but yet to pop. Plenty of traction there.

Find An Active Friend

Find a friend who is highly active on Sphinn, and whose judgement of good stories meets your own tastes. For me an ideal choice is Maki from DoshDosh who seems to have taken a liking to Sphinn and visits every day.

Maki’s Latest Sphinns is a great place to find hot upcoming stories that haven’t made the previously mentioned lists.

Top Posts By Category

This is a great way to find the very best content related to your interests, and much more useful than the greatest hits currently.

My favourite haunts are actually in some of the subcategories that are easily missed.

Other Online Marketing – lots of hidden gems
Affiliate Marketing – currently a bit of a ghost town

For social media, I tend to look at the parent group, because I am interested in all the topics which include Blogging and various social bookmarking and news sites.

Categories are also available for latest hits, such as the Google Category that might be of great interest for search industry watchers and pundits. You will find lots of things here that never reach the major news channels, for better or worse.

The Newest Of The New

If you have some time available to sift through the latest submissions, you can find some good content worthy of your attention. I rarely have time to click beyond the first page.

Example Great Stories From 5 Minutes Browsing

What Not To Do With Your Business Blog – Lee Odden on things that annoy him about business blogs. This is something I have been meaning to write about, and Lee saved me lots of time. I agree with every single point he raised.

11 Tips to Enhance Your Digg User Experience (and Hopefully Bring You Front Page Fame) – Tamar is on my Digg friends list, but also on Pownce and Twitter – the strategies she discussses I know she uses, and it has brought her success. It is a shame she didn’t go into more detail on Digg Friends.

Google; “You can put 50+ words in your title tag, we’ll read it” – real unique research is popular on Sphinn and Shawn proves it. This Ethical SEO experiment is also worthy of attention.

Google Wants Feedback on Removing PageRank Score – Tamar gets 2 links in one post but this highlights the fact that Google get involved a lot in online forums, though quite often not their own ([cough] Toolbar Buttons) and this is in relation to the Google Toolbar showing Pagerank.
My suggestion is a gradient scale, maybe involving more than one colour.

I can just imagine someone using a colour picker and saying “My Google rating is somewhere between #FE3 and #d71”

SEM Isn’t a Neglected Niche

PlugIM has been going reasonably well for quite a while
Bumpzee has lots of communities that are SEO / SEM / Marketing related

There are also a number of other marketing and blogging bookmarking and news sites that I have seen though didn’t seem to have quite as much traction.

Sure, SEO, SEM etc isn’t very popular on sites like Digg unless you have a very cultivated audience, and even then you have to have an insane amount of credibility in the the eyes of the general Digg population to stand a chance of not being buried.

So if it is not availability of suitable social networks for the topic maybe it is…

Sphinn is a Better Technology Platform?

Sphinn is running on Pligg

Well at least Sphinn is sometimes running on Pligg…

PlugIM is also running on Pligg, but from what I can see, other than cosmetic differences such as adding all your other social networks, and possibly “stalking” (I haven’t looked at that closely), the version of Pligg used by PlugIM is much more heavily customised.

This includes:-

• Autosubmission of content
• Tagging (though this isn’t collected from the content)

Categorization of content just doesn’t work – there is a big difference in SMO with the purpose of gaining links, and SMO with the aim to gather email or RSS subscribers for Direct Marketing.

Bumpzee on the other hand is a custom platform – it still has a few bugs, and quite a few features missing. If it received a similar amount of attention as Sphinn seems to be getting, I am sure the guys at Bumpzee would spend a huge amount more time on it rounding off the features.

Ultimately Bumpzee currently blows Pligg out of the water for features unless Pligg is heavily customised.

• Autosubmission of content
• Tagging (picked up automatically)
• Lots of Widgets
• Multiple interlinked communities

Sphinn has no technological advantage, in fact it might be looked on as inferior

Attention Wars

Lots of people in the SEM community have attacked Jason Calacanis for Mahalo his (in his own words) “viable Google co-exister”, and Guy Kawasaki for Truemors.

Danny Sullivan was one of the heavy detractors.

The only reason Sphinn might be successful is Danny Sullivan & Attention

Deja Vu anyone?

Hardly anyone in the SEM community would give a damn about Sphinn if it wasn’t launched by Danny. I have seen Pligg sites heavily criticised by many SEO/SEM specialists.

When Danny Sullivan announced Sphinn, he stated:-

By no means do we envision Sphinn as replacing general news sites like Digg. We just think the story submission model can work and be powerful in a specialized area such as search, as well.

By the way, we’re not the first to try this for search. In February 2006, The Search Engine Press was launched, then John Battelle kicked off SearchMob in September of that year. Since then, we’ve had others appear, including BUMPzee and ISEdb Scoop. We’re happy to join them!

That was actually only the second time Bumpzee had been mentioned on Search Engine Land.

I can only assume that Bumpzee wasn’t gaining exposure on influential SEO / SEM blogs because of some kind of disclosure problem, or not wanting to promote a future competitor, or a future competitor owned by a strategic business partner.

PlugIM has never been mentioned, though it does pick up Danny’s content from Search Engine Land.

At least Sphinn can’t be accused of copying some of the better features on PlugIM.

Critical Mass

Sphinn now exists, and will likely capture the attention of a large proportion of the SEM / SEO community, because ultimately most people involved in SEO / SEM in one way or another are attention and link whores.
Danny certainly has a fair amount of attention, and a lot of other people in the industry with attention are also promoting the site, at least a little.

It will continue to grow as long as Danny keeps driving traffic to it, but he is not even doing a very good job of that.
Guy Kawasaki leverages his own traffic to drive people to Truemors with an RSS feed above the fold on the front page.
Search Engine Land currently only has a link in the top right corner, and no voting buttons as standard.

I also noted that SEL has MyBlogLog removed. Does this mean they are going to try to make Sphinn more “social” with widgets as well?

Unfortunately Sphinn is a very category centric niche voting site – I don’t see it’s population growing beyond the aggregate subscriber base of Search Engine Land and SEOmoz.

Market Segmentation

With Sphinn, the guys from Search Engine Land are effectively claiming their own little kingdom in social news, unfortunately whilst it might be good for Danny to enhance his own attention, and maybe drive traffic to a number of sites that deserve some limelight (I have noticed Meg, Lyndon & Maki doing well), I am not sure this is such an ideal situation.

There are various groups of people involved in SEO / SEM who don’t even acknowledge that the others exist. The same is true of internet marketing and affiliate marketing.

Building Bridges

What was really needed was for existing services to be given some attention, which would have the effect of building bridges between communities.
A service promoted significantly by the SEO / SEM and affiliate / internet marketing community could gain critical mass for a news network that allowed content that was more commercially flavoured, and such a community would also attract casual users, linkerati, press and ultimately drive more traffic to good content.

The best option possible would have been to adopt something that already existed.

Not the Same As Blog Social Networks

In my opinion this is not the same as blog social networks, within which Bumpzee also fall, competing against Mybloglog and Blogcatalog.
In theory there are 75M bloggers, and I doubt there are many more than 200K actively interested in SEO / SEM enough to be involved with a social news site on the topics. It is only when you start merging with internet marketing, affiliate marketing and “make money online” that you start hitting the 1M+ audience that is easily possible.

Spinn Exists – Have to Use It

I am already giving Spinn as much promotion as Danny is himself, with a voting link on every page. I want the attention, but hopefully I can also divert some of that attention towards other services that are equally deserving.

The Alexa data is more for future reference as Sphinn has just plummeted after its launch and will take a while to gain traction.

Including 4 voting buttons on a page is dividing attention, although I have removed StumbleUpon because providing a button was reducing any “thumbs up” I might receive.
Ultimately, if I was to remove one of the 4, it would currently be Sphinn.

Giving Attention

It is honestly a shame that Danny and Search Engine Land took this direction. It would have been much better to promote the existing services extensively 4 months ago. By this time they would be booming, and drawing a much wider audience – such strategies have much stronger long term effects.

Of course it is not just Danny – Rand for instance didn’t even mention competing services in his post, and the first mention of the fact that it was running on Pligg rather than “the site itself has some fairly exceptional functionality” was by Carsten in the comments

When you share your audience with others, quite often you get it back in spades. Two posts in a row touching on reciprocity.

I would honestly much rather be bumping or plugging everyone’s posts than using Sphinn, because that would suggest growing cohesion within the industry, and not more splintering.

With that said, everyone interested in SEO and SEM should sign up with Sphinn, and also grab Michelle’s Sphinn plugin

Some of the things being added are almost invisible, others are much more visible and hint at how a site can leverage partnerships with other communities to broaden their reach, and provide simple feature additions that just make a site more sticky.

I just saw the strangest search query “cancel blogcatalog account”, in my stats.

If you really want to delete a listing, you can use the contact form though why would any sane person want to instruct a PR7 site to delete their links? There are options in the profile to switch off things like email notifications and return your use of Blogcatalog to being purely a directory.

XML-RPC Ping Server

A couple of weeks ago BlogCatalog added a XML-RPC server, allowing you to ping your content updates, in the same way you might ping Technorati.
Whilst it still needs a little work to cover all blog configurations, Blogcatalog also have various forms of search and tagging mechanisms.

You can just add http://rpc.blogcatalog.com/ to your ping list

Blogcatalog Community

The BlogCatalog discussion boards are thriving, with many of the threads exceeding 500 individual entries.

I have no idea how many new threads are being started daily, but it could well be 100+ and it is rare for a new thread to have less than 20 comments.

It is quite overwhelming, I am amazed so many people manage to keep up with the conversations and still have time for some blogging.

Social Network Integration

Not so long ago BlogCatalog added the ability to include links to your profiles on other social networks, social news site, and bookmarking sites.

I am aware that lots of other sites include similar features, including MyBlogLog who has had this for a very long time, but it is still a useful service that helps people build up a meaningful profile on other sites.

You might notice that there is a Mybloglog logo among the many others – they are not scared of their largest competitor which is an admirable trait.

Continuing on the theme…

Bloggers Choice Award’s Integration

With the date moved for the Blogger’s Choice Awards to November, there is a lot more time for newer bloggers to establish an audience and to gain a few votes and Blogcatalog has proven to be a great source of exposure.

They have just added integration with the Blogger’s choice awards. A link is created to the voting page, and you can choose which category that voting page is in.

The voting button is featured quite prominently on the main blog profile.

The announcement in the forums was:-

Starting today you can now add your Blogger’s Choice Awards voting badge to your Blog Listing page. BlogCatalog and Blogger’s Choice Awards have teamed up to give your blogs the attention that they deserve. So if you have been nominated for a Bloggers Choice Award add your badge now and watch the votes roll in!

Blogcatalog and the Bloggers Choice Awards run by PayPerPost is a very good match for some co-marketing. I am glad something came of it after some of the nudging I gave Tony from Blogcatalog, though I have no idea of the details.

Traffic

I am constantly being asked which of the 3 services brings me most traffic, and it largely depends on participation.

• I have a large Mybloglog community, and they generally have more (in total) active members – when I spend time reading new blogs, I tend to get more traffic – the same is true if you get rotated into the hot communities for 24 hours – I am constantly hovering on the edge of the top50 communities, in fact a few times I have seen that I have more community members than blogs in the top50 – maybe the top50 is only refreshed occasionally and filtered
• On Bumpzee I manage one of the largest communities, my No Nofollow / Dofollow Community and I have one of the highest traffic blogs with active “bumpers”, which certainly has a high influence on traffic.
• Blogcatalog I was previously one of the highest rated blogs, if not the highest, though that has certainly dropped off a little in recent weeks – I haven’t spent a lot of time “friending” and joining communities so it was bound to happen

Referrals in the last 30 days

316 Mybloglog Referrals
134 Blogcatalog Referrals (220+ previous month)
623 Bumpzee Referrals
503 Google Reader Referrals (and I have 472 subscribers using Google Reader)

I know those figures don’t compare to social media traffic, but those are readers who visit your blog to read your content. Stumbleupon sent me 1000 visitors yesterday, but only a small percentage became subscribers, or even stayed beyond the 2 second or 10 second barrier.

If I spent more time on the Blogcatalog forum, or in discussions on Bumpzee, I am sure my referrals would be much higher, and the same would probably be true of MyBlogLog if it had something more than a messaging system.

Live Alexa Stats

I thought it would be interesting to show MyBlogLog, Bumpzee and Blogcatalog side-by-side on Alexa. They all have similar users, so in this case it is probably quite accurate.

For some reason I couldn’t get a live Alexa chart to work, not sure if that is a WordPress security fix

Differentiation

I think the differences in each site are quite complex, and in many ways each is favoured by a different kind of blogger and bloggers in different niches. One thing that is certain, based upon the Alexa charts is that MyBlogLog growth has slowed.

Neither Bumpzee nor Blogcatalog have had a huge amount of big media coverage.

I did see one mention of Blogcatalog on Mashable, and Andy Beal picked up one of my posts a while back.
Shoemoney has covered Bumpzee a couple of times and has the voting widget.

For viral marketing, both sites are doing extremely well.

Specific Disclosure: I have been providing a lot of free ideas and feedback both publicly and in private to the 3 main (imho) competitors in this niche, MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, and Blogcatalog, and all 3 would probably look on me as one of their largest supporters, in spirit if not in traffic (I can’t compete with Techcrunch).
With Blogcatalog I have to note that the arrangements are now slightly more formal in a consultancy capacity from which I may receive financial compensation

I thought it was strange that the story hadn’t been submitted to Digg, because it was already appearing on Megite.

Here is the story I submitted on Digg linking through to the original article on Reuters.

However if you do a search on Digg, the article just doesn’t exist…

I am not talking buried, it is as if the article has entered some kind of black hole of censorship.

Here is a search, and it includes buried stories.

The 3 most current search results are about autos.aol.com that are 3 days old.

I know there is a little bad air about Digg/Netscape, but censoring every single story regarding AOL just isn’t fair game.

The Reuters news story is being syndicated far and wide, but the Digg story is linking to the original breaking news.

If Digg wishes to maintain relevance, and its insistance that it is the users who are filtering content, and not the owners, they need to have a lot more clarity about these stories that seem to disappear from the Digg system.

As for AOL News, I think it is a major step forward. I have a 7Mbps connection although it is via an international connection – the page loads much faster than news.yahoo.com and actually faster than my blog homepage (oops)

The code is quite clean and light, and there are interesting pictures throughout the page, not just in the top 3 stories.

One of the biggest takeaways from Traffic Stampede Secrets that I reviewed a few months ago was how important it was to target the right social bookmarking and networking sites for your own sites, and also to evaluate and test how effective a particular bookmarking button might be.

I have just removed my StumbleUpon graphic that floats on the top right of every post, and the Technorati favorites button that was included in the same place.

StumbleUpon

I love StumbleUpon, I use it daily to find great sites, and my readers love it as well.

So why did I remove it?

I use a lot of tracking, and frequently I saw clicks of the StumbleUpon button, but no corresponding reviews.
Someone will click the button, and decide not to write a review, and then click their stumble button to go somewhere else. People are shy….

In that situation you don’t get a vote even if one was intended!

If someone is using StumbleUpon, they have the toolbar installed. The “Thumbs Up” button is right next to the Stumble Button.

It is possible I will get a few less reviews, but hopefully I will also get a few more positive votes for my content – those people who clicked a graphic and were too shy to write a review.

Thus whilst StumbleUpon traffic is great, the button I was using, because it only links through to a review form, might not have been helping me, in fact it might have been a negative for gaining votes, reducing the amount your best content is shared with others.

Digg

None of my content is written specific to a Digg audience. I try to write good “in-depth” content and generally many of my articles are not appropriate for the mainstream Digg audience.

Those articles that are appropriate appear to hit a well known phenomena, as happened on my article on Digg friends (which wasn’t about gaming Digg) or my in-depth review of PayPerPost Direct.

My recent articles on WordPress SEO, contain far more valuable information than the majority of “SEO Tips” articles that seem to make the front page of Digg.
Digg users often have short attention spans, and seem to prefer Digging shorter articles – I am sorry but I am not going to write short articles just for traffic. If an article needs more words, I am going to use them.

I am going to continue including the Digg button, because eventually I believe some of my content might become more appreciated by a wider Digg audience.

Technorati Favorites

The button was duplicating something I already include in my sidebar. I will still be reciprocating, many people find it valuable and it is my way of adding people to various OPML tools I am playing with.
There wasn’t a need to have the button in quite such a prominent position.

I maintain my Technorati Favorites with EngTech’s Technorati Favorites tool, the version from 23/05/2007 is working currently (see comments) – remember to clean up your favorites.

An example of how I use the OPML from my Technorati Favorites is the meme I created on Megite for the Technorati Favetrain.

The only way to be added to this special meme is to add me to your Technorati Favorites, and I reciprocate automatically.

This is how I get to read so many blogs, and seem to appear on blogs all over the blogosphere that have interesting articles.

PlugIM – New Addition

I have been a member of PlugIM for quite a while, and have always found it to be a good source of quality articles focused primarily on internet marketing.

Whilst many people might look on this as some kind of duplication with Bumpzee and the affiliate marketing community there, there is actually only a partial overlap in readership, especially among the dedicated reader base.

PlugIM is very much a niche community, whereas Bumpzee caters for many different communities, one widget fits all.
There are currently hundreds of niche communities which utilise some form of voting script.

Many might look on them as being Digg clones.

If you are a Digg user, let’s be totally honest – do you want the hottest knitting pattern for this coming season (yeah knitters will be thinking about Winter clothing already) appearing on the front page of Digg?

Until Digg caters for all topic areas, there is room for clones. Knitting is probably a bigger niche than Tech industry news.

Now for me, PlugIM is appropriate for my niche, I think it deserves a spot in prime real estate.

I have been waiting a little while to mention Michelle’s PlugIM plugin

When it was first launched it didn’t have the flexibility I needed to position it in the “prime real estate” that I wanted, but it is there now.

It is also very “light” in coding, just 4kb, and I hope it doesn’t affect load time too heavily. It certainly won’t be a factor on single pages. My front page is probably going to change somewhat as I make a lot of SEO changes.

One great advantage of the PlugIM plugin is that once an article is already submitted (which happens automatically because they pick up your RSS feed), you don’t have to be logged into PlugIM to vote, or even be a member.

I am also a marketer – PlugIM is designed for marketers and isn’t selfish – when someone votes on your content, it doesn’t take them away from your website.

Bumpzee

Bumpzee stays

I get a huge amount of traffic from Bumpzee on a daily basis, many of my readers are active users, and I maintain one of the largest communities on Bumpzee for blogs that have removed nofollow from their comments area.

In many ways Bumpzee is more like a social network than a social news or bookmarking site.

Bumpzee is the most multi-purpose voting widget, because the service caters for any niche.

Del.icio.us

I am going to integrate something for Del.icio.us with my next major overhall. I find myself using it more frequently for content I really want to keep a bookmark of for future reference.
It is most likely going to be using Feedburner’s Feedflares.

Netscape

I know a few readers use Netscape, though I have seen only limited usage of it where it has been provided in Feeds for the last 6 months.

Someone browsing your site from Netscape might be doing it with a sidebar with a voting button, so in many ways providing a button is superfluous.

Other Services

I am always on the lookout for services that would be useful to add, which my readers would actually find useful. I can provide lots of different buttons using the hacked version of Sociable I use, if readers are going to use them.

If there is a social bookmark service that you actually use on a regular basis, and would like me to add, please let me know.

Facebook? Well I have included it in my feed for a long time, it doesn’t seem to be used

Other Optimization

I am going to start adding some additional optimization, such as custom greetings for each source of traffic.

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

He had a great article, he submitted it himself, and it flopped on Digg.

Doesn’t that happen to us all? Multiple Times?

But John didn’t give up, and applied some things he learned on other sites.

He then submitted the exact same article, but with different headline, and a new URL (changed page slug), to all the same sites.

The new version of the article has brought him almost 5000 visitors.