Avaweb's Gordon Langlands Interviewed

Another interview.. Travel super affiliate, Gordon "Avaweb" Langlands (http://www.avaweb.co.uk) talks to me over at pheedback.com about his experiences as a travel super affiliate. This is part one of a two a part interview, so we kept the line of questioning for the newbie affiliate marketer. Part 2 will be up soon, with more advanced affilate marketing questions.

Nick Cust - Superbreak Managing Director Interviewed

Another in the series of interviews, this time it's Nick Cust, Superbreak's joint Managing Director, he's talks openly about his personal ambitions as well as his thoughts on disintermediation in the online travel game. Nick also talked about his favourite holiday location... you know i'd have never had him down as a Doors fan :)

Theatrebreak innovator interviewed over at Pheedback.com

Theatrebreaks are the hot new travel deal. with high order value and relatively low supply travel affiliates are jumping on the theatrebreak bandwagon and there seems to be no stopping them. Last week I interviewed Ray Jones AKA Mr Theatrebreak over at pheedback.com and it was an interesting story he has to tell.. like the time he drank champagne out of the FA cup.

Viral Wizard Seth Godin's Squidoo Gains Google Trust

Seth Godin author of many marketing must reads, including Unleashing the Idea Virus (one of the first books/PDF's I read on the subject of viral marketing) has gained the trust of Google with his site Squidoo.com.

If you're not been there, Squidoo.com is kind of a rev shared wikipedia. Rather than articles it allows users to create lenses. Which unlike Wikipedia, cannot be spammed by any random user/spammer.

Due to Seth's remarkable viral ability, the site is growing at an amazing rate and due to the size and organic growth of the site, many lenses are popping up in search results for the terms they're optimized for.

Make a lense for yourself here

Del.icio.us vs Furl - hmmmm.. the jury's out

Until a few days ago, I've been a fan of Furl when it comes to social bookmarking, but I've recently started using del.icio.us (have first imported my bookmarks)

My bookmarks can be viewed at http://del.icio.us/paulreilly

I'm curious as to the creative ways to exploit such sites for viral/social and SEO potential.

Paul

Viral Clickbot Zombie Network - Not a Virus but a Trojan Distributed by P2P

Just to clarify, the virally distributed zombie network I blogged about in my last post, is not actually a virus but a trojan. As such is growth rate (spawn rate) is not as high as it would have been if it utilised a viral transfer mechanism.

Clickbot.A is distributed mostly via P2P networks, so be careful what you download especially when looking for cracked software or P2P porn - you have been warned!

The Clickbot.A mechanism consists of two parts. The first is an executable file that launches a dynamic link library on the system, which later deletes itself. The second is a component of Internet Explorer that notifies the attacker that computer is infected, even allowing the control components to be updated. The bot then registers in the database of the control system, checking that the creator has given authorization to start clicking, and if so, will request the list of addresses from which to click.

OK... so a distributed clickbot isn't going to compromise your computer, but if you're moving in shady circles like these, then expect worse than just clickbots. I speak from experience. I once tried to install a crack from e-mule and it destroyed my machine on a low level. It was the worst nightmare i've had personally and will a) never forget it and b) learn from playing around in dirty water.

My advice.... back up your data and if you need the software commercially, get a legit copy! and if you want to try it out use a legit trial copy.

Click Fraud - Virally Distributed ClickBot Zombie Network - Clickbot.a

Having been working for the past 6 months as a the search marketing executive for a travel company. I've spent the majority of my time managing the PPC adwords campaign, I've constantly noticed some rather unusual click activitiy especially for such competitive phrases as "hotels in manchester" similar derivities for prime destinations. In some instances I saw click though rates as high as 60% on certain days and for certain terms..

While my ad copy writing and testing skills are pretty hot (thanks to the time I spent learning the art from my mentors and old friends Mark Joyner and Dr Joe Vitale) I was unable to explain such freek anomalies on an increasingly day by day basis.

That inability to explain the unusual click behaviour all changed when I stumbled across the podcast show "SEO Rockstars". Having being out of the SEO game for a number of years, in favour of email and viral marketing (.... yes I was short sighted enough to believe that SEO was dead as far back as when paid inclusion and PPC came along) I learned about just how prolific click fraud had become thanks the the insight of Mr Greg Boser (aka WebGuerrilla)

Long story short, last week I recieved an email from my Adwords Rep regarded potential click fraud rebate....

Today I learned that....

PandaLabs has detected a network of computers infected with the bot Clickbot.A, which is being used to defraud ‘pay per click’ systems, registering clicks automatically and providing lucrative returns for the creators. According to the data collected so far, the scam is exploiting a global network comprising more than 34,000 zombie computers (those infected by the bot).

See the full article on what they have uncovered go to Help Net Security.

If you are concerned about Click Fraud, I'd strongly advise you listen to Greg and Darren discussing the click fraud on That's a Wrap following his participation on the click fraud panel at Search Engine Strategies (New York)

Viral Campaign. Mini Cooper - Best Viral Branding Campaign I've Seen

This has to be the smartest viral campaign I've ever come accross. Promoting the new mini cooper. It allows a totally personalized experience which is based on content submitted by the sender based on what you know of the recipient.

Name, where do the come from, whay they do for a living, how's his love life, how would I recognise him, what they do in their spair time, and biggest crime against mankind.

Here's the one I sent to my mate Steve

The production both audio and visual is fantastic. This has to set a new standard in viral advertising and branding. You can customise and send one to a friend from www.aveaword.com

Catering Supplies in York - Viral Link Acquisition Challenge

Here's a challenge... I've been doing a little bit SEO for a york catering supplies company, so I started out by getting listed in a hand full of directories in the appropriate catering supplies catagories, and acquiring a few authority links, then get their pages correctly optimised for their keyword terms.

Being that they are local catering supplies company who I've known for some time now, I'd like to come up with a little something special in terms of a viral link strategy to help fast track their online catering business. So far 100% of their business is generated by adwords.

However, with catering equipments not being the sexiest product in the world. I'm finding it a little bit of a challenge coming up with a creative solution.

Any suggestions on this matter would be appreciated.

Viral Marketing Expert Paul Reilly (according to Google)

I was doing a little ego-surfing and noticed that I was ranking #2 on Google for ‘UK Viral Marketing Expert’ and #10 for ‘Viral Marketing Expert’ it lead my to question Google’s algorithm, since this is a relatively new site, I started to wonder whether Google associated my name “Paul Reilly” with the term “Viral Marketing Expert”

Historically, my old site “www.SystemsInPlace.co.uk” ranked #1 for “Viral Marketing”, and there are many references to my name “Paul Reilly” in the context of being a “Viral Marketing Expert”

See here

.... until I torched it, and got blocked as a spammer, since those days I’ve cleaned up my act, and practice only, white hat, spam free techniques ;)

As I was saying… I wonder if Google is somehow associating my ‘Paul Reilly’ with the proximity text UK Viral Marketing Expert….

Any Ideas.. comment below.

Social Web - Transformation in progress (Pt 1)

I've been thinking rather a lot about viral marketing in today's Web 2 mediascape and it appears that in every successful Web 2 site there is at least one or more viral component, which is largely responsible for the site's success.

As we become better connected through social networks pertinent information is now more viral than ever, with ever decreasing resistance, thanks largely to an increase in points of connectivity and improved usability.

Now that anyone can blog their thoughts online or set up a webpage, the hive has increase exponentially in numbers, making it easier than ever to reach a tipping point.

A couple of years ago, I stated in an interview that I felt the world was turning into a super organism, and that in the future, the human race would become more like a coral reef, at least in it's sense of macro community. Since then social web has become what it is today, and we're begginning to see this transitional phase gather momentum.

Internet means end for media barons - Rupert Murdock gets it!

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Internet means end for media barons, says Murdoch: "'Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall,'"

Rupert Murdock aged 75 - It's amazing how an old duffer like Rupert can get the picture, but so many descision makers in business fail to see the big picture.

What are the known triggers for sandboxing?

SEO Forum - View topic - What are the known triggers for sandboxing?: "what are the known factors/changes that result in sandboxing and the various conditions underwhich that happens"

Is the question I asked a week ago over at Webworkshop.com there have been a number of reply, if you've got any thoughts on this, then go over and have your say.

Off Topic Bastard, You'll Never be a Blogger

I've come to the conclusion that I'll never make a good blogger. I'm always off topic, talk about what ever interests me on a given day, and always stray from my specialist area..; Much like in my personal life, my Saggitarian personality leads me to find interest in whatever take my interest on a given day.

What's more, my contextual advertising (adsense at the top of this page) is always untargetted to this blog and rarely gets clicked. Need to learn a lesson from Jenstar about contextual advertising

Blog Metrics is Here Sign up over at Performacing.com

Performancing Metrics is Here! | Performancing Site: "Performancing Metrics is a professional grade blog statistics service aimed at professional bloggers. We wanted to produce something a little better, a little different for the professional blogger, and I think we have."

This looks like a great service and guess what, it kicks the ass out of Analytics for stability. Let's hope it stays that way.

The Search, great reading :) you'll love it!

Having just started reading “The Search” by John Battelle, it’s s great read so far with a full review on it’s way shortly. The Search documents the full history of search taking great care to tell the ‘behind the scenes story of the technology and business challenges faced by the pioneers of search notably Google, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, Excite. Judging by what I’ve read so far, if you’ve not already read this, I recommend you do, it’s essential reading for any Internet marketer.

New Firefox Extension - AllPeers P2P Client

TechCrunch: "Uk/Czech Republic based AllPeers, a yet to be launched firefox extension for the peer to peer sharing of files..."

Here's an extension which will spread like wild fire around the firefox community, I just read about it over at TechCrunch. I expect it will give Mozilla the juice it needs to make up market share, expecially in the UK. I'll be keeping a close eye on this and reporting more here soon.

I'm especially fond of P2P as a concept and a technology. I'd like to blog here about the ethics of file sharing, just to give you my personal point of view.

"All Marketers are Liars" - Seth Godin speaks at Google - Google Video

"All Marketers are Liars" - Seth Godin speaks at Google - Google Video: "'All Marketers are Liars' - Seth Godin speaks at Google"

The Godfather of permission marketing, and author of one of my favourite books "Unleashing the Idea Virus" talks at the Googleplex about marketing.

Web 2.0 the New Mega-Theme

The Next Net 25: 25 startups that are reinventing the web - Mar. 1, 2006: "There's so much happening that the buzzword recently employed to try to encapsulate the era -- 'Web 2.0' -- now seems hopelessly inadequate, defined and redefined into near meaninglessness by squadrons of aspiring entrepreneurs, marketers, and other fortune hunters."

Web 2.0 has become one of the fastest growing meme's I've seen. When I first heard about it from my good friend Mark Taylor it was still quite underground. When I first described Web2.0 to my boss he looked at me and said... "Web 2.0 is a conference.. according to my sources". It would appear that Web2.0 has mutated into a mega-theme and for many, a way of life.

Microsoft Giving Away Free USB Sticks

"Fill out a short form and Microsoft will give you a free 16MB USB drive loaded with information on Windows licensing."

I just saw this on threadwatch, and just had to fill out the forms. I'm just a sucker for a freebee

:)

Paul