I come across new and useful web applications and PC applications every day, that I generally test out, bookmark, and rarely get a chance to visit again. This is generally very sad because there are some applications I would LOVE to be using, but I know I could never find the time. It’s also sad because often I will completely forget about an amazing app, because I’ve forgotten to go back to it. For that reason, I am going to start a weekly (or monthly) feature where I list these “essential” apps that never get a chance to become as essential as they should be.

1. Songbird (http://www.songbirdnest.com)
Reading from their homepage, Songbird is “a desktop media player mashed-up with the Web.” which turns out to be a great explanation because using Songbird involves discovering excellent music review blogs, and mp3 search engines, and using Songbird to save and organize the music as you would do in iTunes. In fact, if you choose to go all the way with Songbird, it can import your iTunes/WMP/music library and become your full time music player. Songbird is open source and built on the same engine as Mozilla, which lends to it’s appeal.

Initially I spent weeks with Songbird, discovering new music to listen to, and uploading it to my iPod. It’s a great blog reader, allowing you to bookmark and revisit your favorite music blogs and quickly grab the music that they review, and it became part of my daily morning routine, finding new music to listen to during the day. The problem is that soon, my morning routine literally started to take up my whole morning, so Songbird started to gather dust. I still load it up from time to time to find new music, but it deserves more love than I’ve been giving it, so hopefully it can cheat on me with you and get a little more action.

2. coComment (http://www.cocomment.com)
I found coComment while doing a competitive analysis for my own business idea - which was to create a way to keep track of all of the comments I was leaving on various blogs, and to create a social network around people who comment on the same blogs I was commenting on. coComment was already doing a great job of this (albeit without the social aspect), so I was happy to begin using the service rather than attempt to recreate it. coComment can work as a Firefox plugin, or as a bookmarklet. As you post on blogs, coComment records your comment, and then begins to monitor those comment threads and update you as others comment, or respond to your comment. It’s like subscribing to email notifications of comments without cluttering your inbox.

I still use coComment today, but I rarely check it directly anymore, and instead I’m content to let it keep track of my comments in case I ever need to reference them. It’s a great service for that, and it has other great features as well, such as networking with other people through their comments, and promoting your comment threads to the community which can help drive traffic to your website.

3. Mixwit (http://www.mixwit.com)

Mixwit isn’t the only site allowing you to create and share mp3 mixtapes, but it’s my favorite because you can label and select from real cassette tape images. I love the idea of exchanging mixtapes online, it’s a great way to discover new and old songs, and to get to know people through their musical tastes. It’s also a great time saver when you’re going for long drive and want to bring great music!

As will each of these great apps, you need to make time to take advantage of them. It’s a great service to bookmark for discovering new music, and it’s even better in combination with Songbird. Also, check out Muxtape.

4. Herd St. (http://herdst.com)

Herd St. started out as Stockalicious. I found them while looking for a great online stock portfolio management tool. Herd St. surpassed my expectations, because they not only offered excellent portfolio management, but the ability to create fantasy portfolios for testing your trading theories. Herd St. allows you to create public portfolios and compare them to other members, and to follow those other member’s picks to learn to trade better.

While Herd St. allowed me to easily enter in my historical data from the last 2 years of trading, it’s hard to completely move away from my online broker’s tools, as bad as they are. I am looking forward to giving Herd St. another chance now that I see they offer feeds and widgets, which would allow me to bring my charts onto my start page where I can see them easily. The honest truth is I’ll migrate to the first portfolio management system that offers a data export API, which would allow me full use of my stock trading data.

5. Miro (http://www.getmiro.com)

Miro is the killer app for video that I’ve always wanted. It is able to organize internet tv, bitorrent downloads, youtube videos, and other video media the way that iTunes organizes your music. It is smart, and a time saver, because Miro enables you to subscribe to bittorrent through RSS and download video automatically, the way that iTunes handles podcasts. It comes with most of the video codecs you need to play most videos you will find, and it is a great way to discover internet tv shows and channels.

I’m not sure why I don’t use Miro more than I do. After reviewing it, I really have no choice but to kick myself for not using Miro and saving time. Why am I using uTorrent and VLC to play downloaded video?

6. Google Notebook (http://www.google.com/notebook)

Google Notebook is incredibly useful for research online, especially if you are a blogger. It allows you to copy text, images and links into a scrapbook, and organize them into folders. You can also comment on each item you clip to your notebook. You can then access these notes from your Google account, so they are available to you from any computer. Google Notebook can be used with a handy Firefox extension. They even have a mobile version that allows you to view your notes from your mobile phone.

When I use Google Notebook, I use it a lot. I use it to collect research for blog post ideas, and business ideas. The problem with Google Notebook, is that I envision it being used for so much more. This could be the new way to bookmark, rather than using traditional bookmarks or even del.icio.us. The problem is that after a while, it becomes cumbersome, and hard to tag your links, webclips, and ideas. I am looking forward to reviewing Evernote, as I am hoping that service can be what I hope Google Notebook can one day be.

7. Flock (http://www.flock.com)

Flock calls itself The Social Web Browser, and it does a great job. It is powered by Mozilla Firefox, and can make use of all of the extensions that Firefox can use. It is customized to integrate with social networks such as Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and Twitter, so that you can easily view updates from each service directly from a sidebar in the browser. It also has many blogging tools built in, featuring webclips (similar to Google Notebook) and the ability to post directly to your blog. While most of these features can be installed into Firefox through various extensions, Flock does it all right out of the box, and it’s very well designed.

Unfortunately, I found Flock unstable, although many users find it more stable than Firefox. Flock is a great browser that I would love to use in theory, but I found it to clutter my browsing experience, rather than simplify it. I’d love to give Flock another try in the future, maybe when they release their next update.

Online tracking is starting to radically change the way we do business, and the way we operate as a society. It has taken marketing from circulation figures and Nielsen ratings to CTRs and CPAs. It has organized our relationships, interests and activities into social networks. The time we spend on the internet, and soon in the real world through GPS and internet connected phones, is all trackable, and thus, monetizeable.

In the future, we will all become micro-affiliates.

We are beginning to openly allow our activities to be tracked and monitored. For now, I am not referring to “big brother” style government monitoring, but activities we allow to be public, such as our interests, where we get our information, where we spend our money, and who we know. This information is obviously very valuable to marketing companies. Currently, advertisers are able to target our activities through contextual advertising, but it should seem obvious that contextual only begins to scratch the surface of effective marketing.

In the future, we will demand that the marketing we see is targeted to us.

If you are working online, you know your time is becoming very valuable. We are already using RSS feeds and subscriptions to filter out the information we need each day, and using social networks to keep up with our friends activities and interests. We use product reviews and comparisons to decide what we should be buying, and read specialized blogs to find out about new products on the market. Current contextual advertisements work like magazine ads, anticipating our interests based on what we are reading, however there is potential for advertisements to be much more cerebral.

Facebook attempted this with Social Ads (even applications took Facebook data into ads outside of Facebook), however they received a massive amount of backlash for showing personal product recommendations from friends without their consent. Most people were upset about this because of their privacy, however I think they should reconsider. Social ads are a great concept, as long as the people they use are being compensated with affiliate commissions.

In the future, we will help companies recommend products

When you connect our personal interests, with what we purchase and how we rate those purchases, you get information that is not only valuable to marketing companies, but valuable to other people. We are all accustomed to looking up product reviews before we purchase a product, but even those are often hard to find and hard to trust. When I purchase a product, it would be invaluable to be able to see reviews from people with similar shopping habits and interests to myself. In addition, it would be even more valuable to be able to connect with that person, and to chat with them about that product before I bought it.

In the future, we will want to help others purchase the products we recommend

The only way that we would want to give this valuable information about ourselves away, is if we are paid to, as affiliates would be. Companies should be more than happy to share revenue in order to market more efficiently. We should be able to earn micro-affiliate commissions through our shopping habits. We should be able to increase those commissions by offering product reviews. We should be able to increase our commissions further by actually making ourselves available to answer questions about products we buy.

The future is soon, so who’s doing this?

The next generation of cell phones will allow us to use GPS, the internet, and RFID to combine real-world activities with online research and tracking. The infrastructure will be there to allow online marketing techniques to follow us out into the real world - when we want it to. A company like Google, who is already a specialist in contextual marketing, could be the company to turn us all into micro-affiliates. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. It makes good business sense that one day, they should organize our consumer habit information, and make it accessible to others - for a commission, please.

While building a website you either have, or will, face the point where you have to design the acquisition funnel. Your web app is ready for prime time, you’ve poured everything into the development of your idea and you are convinced that you’ve created something valuable that your target market will love once they finally get their hands on it. In essence, this thing will promote itself.

That may sound naive, but many many web entrepreneurs expect this kind of success. There are many great startups out there, and yet many sit undiscovered and unloved because they have failed to communicate their value - they have a poor acquisition funnel.

How To Test Your Acquisition Funnel

I am currently testing my funnel in my own startup. The core product is complete, and works well. Before I begin to aggressively promote my app, I’ve started creating small, closed acquisition tests - and unfortunately the first few tests have been a huge disapointment. At first I was shocked, and couldn’t overcome my own developer’s hubris. My app kicks ass, I use it every day - how could people not see how valuable it is? My design is very simple and uncluttered, and I’ve created a demo video to show people how to use it, so why aren’t people completing my registration form?

I started out by drawing more attention to my registration button. I have an online marketing background, so I’m very familiar with tweaking my call-to-actions for the past 5+ years. I created a large, attractive “click here” style registration button and tried again with another sample of traffic. The results were ok, I did see about a 10% increase in registrations, but once these users registered, they still did not make full use of the service. In fact, many registered and never set up the service - they left and never returned. It was very frustrating.

At that point, it became obvious that I was approaching the problem in the wrong way. Optimizing conversions is no longer as simple as tweaking the visibility of my call-to-action. I started to analyze what data I had from my traffic tests, and found that my visitors were actually interacting with a free version of my web app that I’d made available through the homepage, but not with my registration form. I increased my tracking and found that my visitors did seem to enjoy using the free tool (even returning to use it later), and likely didn’t see the reason to fully register. I now have some information I can use to help solve my problem.

A Possible Solution: Gradual Engagement

I know my customers like to use the free version of my product, so I started to think of a way to combine the feature they are already using with the registration process so that after using the free tool, my customer only had to enter their contact information to complete their account setup. It was great timing to come across an article by superstar interface designer Luke Wroblewski, Principal Designer for Yahoo. Entitled “Sign Up Forms Must Die”, the excerpt from Luke’s forthcoming book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks discusses what Luke calls Gradual Engagement, or the process of only users for registration information as it is necessary, rather than forcing them to hand over their information up front.

Luke starts with an example of Jumpcut.com, which allows you to edit a movie in your browser, and only asks you for sign-up information once your movie has been created and you wish to distribute the result. He continues to profile Geni.com, which asks you for your email address, and then creates a username and password for you while you immediately begin the process of creating your family tree. Luke describes:

Once again through the process of gradual engagement, you learned what a web service does, and you did it without an explicit registration form requiring you to fork over a lot of information.

This is exactly what I was looking for, and I have now begun to redesign my acquisition funnel based on gradual engagement. While my visitors use my web app to make simple queries, I have begun to save their information so that once their action is complete, I can present them with the opportunity to activate a fully configured account simply by creating a username and password. The idea is that by this point, the customer has experienced the value of the tool and is now ready to create a full account to take advantage of all of the features of my web app.

Remember, This Is Gradual Engagement, Not Rapid Engagement!

One last point I’d like to make is that the process must be clear to the customer, especially once I am ready to create an account for them. I remember visiting a website in the past which tried their own form of gradual engagement, and appeared to log me into a fully functional account without ever asking me to create a username and password. I was very confused as to whether I had registered and how they were able to create an account for me, and ended up accidentally leaving before I had a chance to complete the setup, and lost my data.

Done correctly, gradual engagement accomplishes two goals for you - your customer learns how to use your product while they create their account. At then end, they have already become an active customer.

For more articles by Luke Wroblewski, check out his website.

Since my last article, I have been meaning to write more in depth on the idea of giving away web services for FREE, and the mistakes some companies make in their approach to this model.

The online culture has always trended towards the FREE. Low manufacturing and distribution costs for digital goods and services cause the consumer to demand low (or preferably no) prices, and an abundance of low cost (or preferably free) labor through open source software and outsourcing reinforce those low costs. Unfortunately, this has created a business culture which is foreign to practically everyone, where classic business rules seem not to apply.

The FREE model is not being executed correctly.

Most FREE services look at traffic as their eventual monetization strategy. They offer their service for FREE, to make their adoption and conversion rates as high as possible, and plan to monetize their networks by adding advertising and subscription models once they reach critical mass. While this strategy is working well for a company like YouTube, which is now able to monetize their huge traffic with in-video ads, it is a failing strategy for most companies going down this road. It is the culture online right now that fame precedes fortune. Many entrepreneurs dream of having their name behind an instantly recognizable service, and assume that once they have the traffic and users, monetization will come naturally.

It is the culture online right now that fame precedes fortune.

It is a mistake to look at the eventual monetization of YouTube videos, and to ignore Adwords. Google acquired YouTube in 2006, and by allowing Adwords advertisers to publish ads on YouTube videos, Google is able to gain massive secondary revenue beyond the advertising revenue YouTube earns through the placements themselves. These new ad units have created an entirely new channel for Google, and as YouTube videos move from the browser to the mobile phone and television set, this ad channel will draw more advertising dollars through Adwords. Simply placing ads or a subscription model onto your massive traffic network isn’t a great strategy without a secondary revenue model.

How the FREE model should work

If you’re planning to offer your service for FREE, you’d better come up with a secondary way of making money. Your fantastic free service has the ability to grow very fast, and you should have a secondary business ready to use this free traffic for referrals and to monetize it. This model is used very well by mobile phone companies, who give away FREE cell phones, and make money through the service plans. As the company who created a great free service, you can use the attention of your customers to cross-sell them into one of your paid services, to sell B2B services, etc.

How does Twitter make money?

In my opinion, Twitter doesn’t have to make money. Obvious, the company who created Twitter, stands to gain quite a lot as the creators of an iconic service even without monetizing the service itself. It would be a mistake if Obvious were to currently focus all of their attention on how to monetize Twitter directly through advertisements, a business Pro version or subscription model, or through data plans to bring Twitter onto mobile phones. While these are each possibilities, Obvious stands to benefit more by adding new money making services next to Twitter, or by leveraging the infrastructure needed to run Twitter to sell B2B services. There are numerous secondary businesses which Obvious would be at a huge advantage to launch, building on the success of Twitter.

The current state of FREE is killing business development online

Hank Williams, blogger at Why Does Everything Suck? argues today that the FREE model, funded by VC investments, is killing the ability for online business to grow and develop normally. The “grow now, monetize later” strategy allows VC funded companies to give away for free, what a normal small business startup would charge for. Without a secondary model for earning money, these VC funded companies are often unable to monetize their services, and eventually enter the deadpool.

The abundance of web applications is incredible. For most problems you will face online, a quick search in Google is very likely to turn up a web application that can solve the problem you are facing, on a wide range of platforms. If you are a hacker, dev, or SEO, and there ISN’T a solution to your problem, chances are you’re rushing to build one and claim the niche as your own. On the web, a problem is really an opportunity.

The popularity of APIs was a tremendous catalyst for the creation of web apps. For each popular web service that is released, a race begins to create every variation of widget, API extention and web tool that a smart developer can think of - it’s an amazing symbiotic relationship for both the company that releases the API, and the developers who can build companies from it.

This raises a question for the developers of web apps though - is your tool a monetizeable asset that you can build into a business, or simply a gift to the internet for which you will incur the costs? Is this tool going to become your startup, or just one in a number of tools you are launching? The best way to find out is to write a quick business plan that includes estimations of your costs, and revenues.

• Operating Expenses - hosting fees, API usage fees, marketing costs
• Revenues - advertising revenue, affiliate revenue, user fees, referral revenue

Most of these tools fall into one of several categories, see which one you should fall in, so that you can get the most out of your contribution.

100% Free

Most applications will (or should) fall into this category, because the market for most web apps tends to be small. Creators should be realistic about the size of their market. How large is the user base of the parent community? What percentage of those users will need to use your application? What percentage of that percentage will find your application through your marketing efforts? Creators of free apps can often benefit from their association with the application. A successful and useful web app is a good opportunity to promote yourself or your company for offering the service, and to use the referrals to your other core businesses to gain monetization. The notoriety that comes from running the application can make you an authority in the community, and can lead to profitable referrals or consulting work driven to your parent company or blog. A web app can be the thing that gains you credibility and name recognition, especially at conferences.

If the negative cost outweighs the benefits for you, then you should consider that you aren’t the right person to build this web application, and give your idea to the community where somebody else will pick it up. It is unfortunate when a good application is created, but eventually becomes slow and unusable when the developer cannot afford to support the traffic. Plan for this! While you may be excited to build your idea, is it worth it to become successful and then have to shut down?

Advertising Supported

Creators should put some consideration into whether to add advertising to their applications. While it is very easy to add Adsense to your application, consider whether your application lends itself to contextual advertising. Often a good application can be left unused because their developers have tried to place advertising on them in a way that doesn’t make sense, ruins the user experience, or makes the user feel like they are being taken advantage of. If you are going to build an application and you require advertising revenue to monetize it, make sure you plan for well placed advertisements which will benefit from high CTRs.

Advertising As A Business Model

Some of the most successful apps are mashups which combine a useful functionality with a CPA or revenue share point of sale. If you are developing this type of application, be sure that your idea is equally as useful to your users, as it is to you for making sales. A widget that sells books on Amazon will only be successful if it gives an added benefit to the people who use it. Just as a useful application should measure the amount of advertising it places, a good sales tool should measure the amount of benefit it adds to the user.

Case Study: TwitterCard

I recently became enamored with Twitter, and wanted to create a 125×125 graphic which would fit well into my blog design, and let others know about what I tweet about so that they can follow me. I couldn’t find any other widgets that did the job I wanted, so I registered TwitterCard.com.

At this point I quickly wrote out my estimated costs, and considered what monetization opportunities existed. I was sure that I did not want to include advertising on TwitterCard, as it will have a small market at best. I determined that hosting the app would be cheap enough that I could absorb the costs into my existing hosting fees. TwitterCard includes a link to my blog at the bottom, and a link to my Twitter profile as the example card, so the benefit I get from it is to make more contacts, and bring people into my blog.

More Reading: How Are We Going To Make Money? [howtosplitanatom.com]

I signed up at RocketProfit a few weeks ago, and was immediately impressed by their selection of campaigns, especially in exclusive campaigns, so I’ve been excited to give them a try. In the few months since I really got into CPC, I’ve done most of my advertising with NeverblueAds campaigns, but since some of my favorite campaigns were recently disabled, it’s been a good time to try something new.

It was good timing to see John Chow’s new contest for an Elite Retreat pass, because he’s challenged us to come up with a marketing strategy using campaigns from RocketProfit - something I was already doing. Elite Retreat sounds like a dream come true event for everyone involved - like a Dragon’s Den for online entrepreneurs to bring their business plans together, learn from some really talented and experienced mentors, and to benefit from their expertise to strengthen your business plan.

There are so many possibilities with the RocketProfit campaigns right now, I really don’t know where to start. While there are a lot of campaigns that can simply be pushed through CPC on search and Facebook, I’d like to come up with something where I’m not at risk of competition driving my keyword prices up too much. I’d also like a campaign where I simultaneously build a list of my own, so I can re-use it in the future.

What I came up with is simple, and effective. The one flaw is that there is already competition in the market, but I’ve come up with a contest that would hopefully help me to promote the application.

Grower Flowers Campaign

My campaign involves creating a Facebook (and Bebo) application to send virtual flowers for Valentines Day. Once the application is installed, it allows you to send virtual flowers to any person on your contact list, along with a message.

The application will advertise Grower Flowers in the application window, as well as recommending to the sender that they can follow up with real flowers after they send the virtual ones, with another link to Growers Flowers. As with any Facebook application, the transaction will be featured in both the sender and recipient’s news feeds, and on the recipient’s profile page. A text ad will appear beneath the gift, allowing the recipient to send back a virtual flower, or send real flowers using Grower Flowers.

In order to encourage people to install the application, I would give away 1 real flower gift through Grower Flowers per day randomly to 1 person who sent virtual flowers, and list those winners in the application. The free flowers will be valued at $39.95 USD

To advertise, I would place ad variations with Facebook Social Ads. I would promote that you can send virtual flowers for free, with a chance to win a free real bouquet from Grower Flowers. I would also promote the app through Facebook App advertising platforms like SocialMedia and Cubics.

As a bonus, I would collect information about the people who install my Facebook application. I can use the birthday information to promote sending flowers on birthdays, and I can market the application seasonally.  There is also the opportunity to sell the application as it grows larger.

I think that done right it could be a successful, long term campaign that could cycle many different online flower retailer affiliate programs.

Rough projections here..

Growers pays $14 per sale. I would expect to pay an average of $0.35-$0.60 CPC on Social Ads and $0.10-$0.20 on apps. I would expect to get more installs through app advertising, but higher quality leads through the Social Ads. With a $500 advertising budget per day, I’d hope to see 1500+ clicks and 500+ installs (rough numbers) daily, escalating as the app grows virally. That means I’d have to sell 40 flowers per day to break even, but I may be able to cut back on my ad spend as the app grows as long as I keep meeting my 500 daily installs. That is 3500 people by Valentines day, sending a minimum of 3500 virtual flowers. At minimum, I’d have to convert 250 of those to a sale to break even on a $500 daily ad spend (or 7%). The success would really depend on how viral the app went, and how many installs I could get over 3500 to decrease my required conversion ratio.

I hope that this idea shows some of my thought process - my approach to marketing is to try and create an application of value rather than to just dump campaigns into search and hope my margins work. I’m currently working on some big ideas that I’d love to bring to Elite Retreat - especially since I’m quitting my day job to pursue them next month.

This past summer, my long time friend Sarah travelled to Kenya to volunteer in a school.  Like others who volunteer in Africa, she funded her trip herself, and stayed as long as she could afford to.  She returned earlier this month when the disputed elections threatened to tear the country’s democracy apart, and it was no longer safe to be there.

Sarah is still trying to help the children at her school in Nairobi, even from home.  She has set up a request with GiveMeaning.ca to collect just $400 in donations to help aid the school.  In order for GiveMeaning to even start collecting donations, Sarah must collect 100 votes from people indicating that her cause is worthy of our support.

If you are interesting in voting, please go to  http://www.givemeaning.com/proposal/canadianinkenya and vote.  You do not have to donate any money, simply show your support so her cause can be seen by those who will donate.

Hello Friends and Family,

As most of you know, I was recently in Kenya, volunteering at a small school in Nairobi. I had to leave prematurely and have since been dedicated to raising funds to build a kitchen and to wall in the compound, as well as raise awareness of the conflict currently in the country. We had attempted to get charity status in Canada (we already have this status in Kenya) but have run into roadblocks here, given the current state of affairs there. I implore you now to help me in my fight to protect the wellbeing of these children, who are innocent victims in the conflict. You can help by agreeing that this is a worthy cause and by telling all your family and friends the same. We are a global community and together we can incite change.

Thank you,
Sarah

Thanks for your support!

 Over 2 months has passed since my last update on November 11th, and I’ve been very busy, so I’ll be breaking up my updates into separate posts.   Within the next 2 months, I will have officially quit my day job in order to start building my own company, and to pursue my various online business ideas.  Back in December, I also got heavily into CPC marketing so I have quite a lot to write about on how I’ve made my first $15,000 in CPC marketing.

Since my last posting was about WidgetBucks, I thought I’d continue on that topic by updating on my November, December and January earnings.  WidgetBucks has gone through some big changes in that time - by their description, in order to keep their traffic value up in order to offer high CPC revenues.  In essence what happened was that they cut back on CPC revenue and referral commissions, and by January my CTR had been cut in half.

So, as before I ran WB in a typically low CTR game screen, and saw revenues of $61.62 in November, $88.13 in December and $47.70 in January, despite seeing a 10% increase in traffic per month.   As of today I’ve taken down WB in favor of running some CPA offers through NeverBlueAds.  I’ll update at the end of the month on the differences between CPC and CPA marketing in this ad space.

As a follow-up to my first article about WidgetBucks, I can now report on my first month’s earnings. I placed WidgetBucks in the spots where I had previously been running AuctionAds, and was immediately impressed with the results. My total for October was $79.79, which did well compared to the last few months with AuctionAds, although could not compete with the $25 bonuses I received when people signed up with eBay.

The total seems to have been adjusted and debited, and what was alarming was that I received an email from WidgetBucks claiming that they had detected click fraud and a violation of their TOS on my sites. I ran these ads in a game window where the CTR is typically low, and only saw an average of 0.04% CTR on the 522,875 impressions I sent over. There is no way there was click fraud with such a low CTR to start with, so I will have to monitor this closely and ensure I receive my payment in 45 days when they process payouts. While I am happy that they stay on top of click fraud, I was very disturbed by the email as it did not include any evidence, simply an excerpt of their TOS.

October was a record month for me overall, and I’m looking forward to trying some new things in November. I’m already seeing an increase in Adsense and WidgetBucks earnings this month, and I’m hoping to spend more time tweaking my NeverBlue campaigns to see why they are performing so poorly.

I had my first encounter with a Facebook Ad outside of Facebook today.  My initial response to it was very optimistic.  I had just bought tickets to see Battles in Toronto this weekend, and on the checkout page I saw the following ad:

Initially, I was pretty happy to see this.  I figured that I would be able to click on it and see a list of other people who had bought tickets to see Battles, like I would view a Facebook Group.  This would let me see if anybody in my friends circles were going, or meet new people who’d be there.  The ad was actually a link to install the iLike application, which I installed thinking it might lead me to a list of concert go-ers.

I haven’t found the list yet.  Instead I was profiled by iLike on my music listening habits so that they can let me put links to songs on my profile in exchange for likely selling me concert tickets, cds and movies in the future - and probably targeting my friends list as well.

So, here’s my take on this.  Up to now, Facebook has had the strength of linking us in ways that were not possible before to our friends and our community.  We can view what our friends are doing, who their friends are, pictures of them.  We can join groups and meet other people, increasing our circle of influence and helping us keep track of it all.  This has been so useful and successful that it’s our instinct to think any ad associated with Facebook (especially in Facebook’s familiar style) will similarly link us to useful information.  As advertisers fail to deliver on these expectations, it’s going to have an effect on Facebook’s overall trust and appeal.  Soon, like your inbox, it will become harder to tell what is safe to click on, what is useful, and what is just junk.

On a related note, I also signed up as an advertiser in Facebook Ads to promote Poker Underworld.   I’ve chosen a $0.05CPC campaign so it will be interesting to see if this price can deliver me any new players and how popular it will be.  Once I’ve had time to complete the Poker Underworld Facebook application, I’ll link the ad to that instead.  I’m hoping to see nice growth in November after a very strong October.