Which is better Groupon or LivingSocial?

Who offers the best daily deals online? Well here’s the deal… these days you can’t swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting a  daily deals website, they are popping up like bunnies at the pet store. In their simplest form daily deals websites work like this, the daily deals company strikes up an agreement with a local retailer and offers them a surge in customers if the retailer will offer these customers a deal they can’t refuse. In return the daily deal company (such as Groupon or Living Social) takes a cut of the sales. That business model has proven to be wildly successful as both Groupon and LivingSocial are valued in the billions of dollars. In fact it wasn’t that long ago that Google tried to buy Groupon for a ridiculous amount of money but Groupon said “no thanks”. Which is why Google is starting their own Daily Deals project called Google Offers. Internet monster Facebook is also jumping into the mix with a little thing called Facebook Deals.

How do you use Groupon or LivingSocial?

Simple, you review the daily deals on the Groupon/LivingSocial website or check your email for deals. If a deal looks like something you want… you buy it! Generally you get 50% off (or more) for whatever it is that they are selling. For instance you might get $50 in premium cigars at the posh cigar lounge for $25. You then print out your coupon and take it to the retailer to redeem it. Groupon and LivingSocial both have iPhone apps you can also choose to use for buying and redeeming coupons.

Which Daily Deals site is the best?

Groupon's website is well designed and easy to use.

Since Google Offers and Facebook Deals are newcomers lets focus on Groupon and LivingSocial. Right off the bat I give the marketing and branding edge to Groupon. Groupon is a catchy name and it tells me exactly what I’m getting i.e., a coupon that is super great because I’m joining a large group purchase. Conversely LivingSocial doesn’t paint a mental picture of a group-coupon site, instead it sounds like a dating site or a Twitter clone. Groupon.com also has the advantage in website design since it’s easy to use and screams online deals, while with LivingSocial I still get the feeling that I’m on a website that isn’t coupon related.

Who’s deals are better, Groupon or LivingSocial?

LivingSocials daily deals are diverse and require no minimum.

The answer to that question is highly subjective but since LivingSocial gives a larger cut (60%) of the sale to the retailer, in the long run it’s likely LivingSocial may be able to offer the best deals and the widest range of online deals and coupons. Another nice thing about LivingSocial is that their deals have no minimum, and better yet, if three of your friends buy the deal on your recommendation you get the deal free! Groupon on the other hand requires that a certain number of customers buy the deal before the daily deal actually becomes valid. (If the deal doesn’t go “live” your money is refunded)

There is room for both daily deals giants

LivingSocial is the original daily deals website but Groupon is it’s slicker younger brother who has grabbed the lion’s share of the daily deals online market. However, I think there is room for both of these companies to thrive yet I’m not sure if there is room for two more so we will have to wait and see how the market shakes out after Facebook and Google jump in with full force. Personally, I’m a Groupon kinda guy, I like their deals and I understand and follow their branding and user tools. My wife however prefers LivingSocial so I guess there are no clear cut winners as of yet but this market is changing by the minute and could look dramatically different in a year from now.

And the award goes to...

The squeeze page is the internet’s version of the carnival barker. You know that well dressed slick talking person who tempted you into entering the House of Mirrors? Except in the case of the squeeze page the barker is generally some internet “guru” who has all the secrets for making millions on the internet which he will share with you for a small fee.

The squeeze page is an art form, a carefully crafted page that keeps you reading as long as possible so that your investment in time on the page tugs at your sensibilities in that you feel compelled to buy the product because it will make you a millionaire, and heck you have already spent so much time on the page you may as well buy it.

Step right up ladies and gentlemen.

I enjoy the squeeze page for it’s cleverly crafted play on the psyche of the would-be affiliate marketer. These “guru’s” know exactly what sells, and what doesn’t, and make no mistake about it these guys are raking in some serious cash especially if their squeeze pages are done in a clever way. Therefore I would like to recognize some of the more well-done squeeze pages I have seen recently and award them with my own version of the “Oscar”. Lets call this award the “Squeezy”. I will award several awards this year but lets start with the first three awards….

Best video in a squeeze page.

And the award goes to…. Commission Crusher

The video starts with the line… “You don’t even deserve to be on this page.” and boasts “You ARE just 10 clicks (no 6 clicks) away from the ONLY software tool that taps into a completely new… completely unexposed… cash juggernaut that’s about 100 times bigger than Clickbank, the biggest online digital marketplace.” Those are some typical and classic squeeze page lines and Steve Iser’s video is creative and entertaining from beginning to end (and it’s beginning to end is a long time because this isn’t a short clip). With his “rock star” attitude and intentionally condescending attitude Steve’s squeeze page video keeps you interested and on the page dreaming of the “what if this could really work for me?” which is of course the goal of every squeeze page. He pokes a bit of fun at himself for his Canadian accent which adds a bit of warmth to the piece and I enjoy that the video mixes in a fair dose of comedic jabs at affiliate marketers who spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on every new money making scheme that comes down the pike, Steve highlights that fact in the line “If I asked you for your LEFT Kidney in exchange for this software, you’e probably do it.” Classic stuff Steve!

I’m not sure how effective Steve’s product is but I can tell you that he has put together an excellent squeeze page and I’m sure it will generate many sales for him and the affiliates that choose to promote his product which is an offering in the ClickBank marketplace.

Favorite line from the video: “Finding a few more of these hidden money springs which now are no longer hidden. They’re completely exposed and laid bare like cleavage in a wet t-shirt contest.”

Most wild claim for a squeeze page product

And the award goes to…. Daniel Young’s Push Button Cash Site

Push Button Cash Site claim: “Top Secret Push Button Software Makes $159,720.68 Per Month On Autopilot Using Nothing But Floods of Highly Targeted, 100% FREE Traffic!”. Wow, that’s an amazing claim Daniel. The Push Button Cash Site squeeze page is very well done featuring loads of ClickBank screen grabs of miraculous results (as you might expect). I have no doubt that money can be made with this product either by purchasing it or promoting it yourself as an affiliate, but don’t forget to stop and smell the roses a bit and appreciate the fine art of the squeeze page that Daniel Young has put together.

Just turn it on auto-pilot and start living the high life!

Favorite line from the squeeze page: “You too can start making money in just 3 minutes setup and a single push of a button!”

Best use of stock imagery in a squeeze page

And the award goes to… Profit Monarch

Ok, lets face it most of us internet marketers use stock imagery all the time so it’s certainly not a “no no” but there are times when stock imagery seems to stick out like a sore thumb and that is the case with the squeeze page for Profit Monarch.

I nearly spilled my coffee as I was checking out the Profit Monarch’s website when I came across the following line with the stock imagery below.

“This is a true GAME CHANGER that will make you a winner…”

I mean seriously…. look how happy that guy looks busting through the finish line with brief case in hand, heck that makes me want to buy the product right there, forget about the rest of the pitch!

Favorite image from the Profit Monarch squeeze page? The flying sea turtle (don’t ask me, go see for yourself).

That’s it for now. Congratulations to the winners so far and until next time keep those creative squeeze pages coming!

So you have decided to drive traffic to your websites with Twitter but now you are are getting swamped with SPAM which makes Twitter useless (at least as far as following the updates of good Twitter accounts). Well, the following article is a common sense strategy to help tame the Twitter SPAM problem.

But first we need to review how we ended up with this problem in the first place. To market on Twitter you need to create Twitter accounts for your various websites and you also need to build these Twitter accounts up by getting lots of targeted followers that will be interested in what you have to say. To do this, you need to use a tool such as Tweetadder and follow people on Twitter that you want to follow you back. The problem is, that when you follow tons of folks on Twitter you will also end up following tons of Twitter spammers which makes your Twitter account pretty much useless since it will be filled with spam-ish style updates.

Does this look familiar…?

Does your Twitter account look like processed meat product?

You could always unfollow accounts that SPAM your Twitter timeline but trust me when you are following tens of thousands of accounts it will be no easy task. You could also make Twitter lists of the accounts that you DO like and then you could ignore the SPAM. The problem with that approach is it is very time consuming (picking and choosing good accounts) and it doesn’t help the fact that all these spammers will be filling up your direct message box, therefore we do not believe that is a viable strategy.

Avoiding Twitter SPAM is as simple as this:

Create a new Twitter account, an account that you will NOT be using for marketing purposes (lets call this account your “personal” or “hot list” Twitter account). With this personal account you will only follow the folks that you REALLY want to read what they have to say. You will not be trying to build up the following of this account, you could even set the account to “private” if you really want to keep it hidden from the spammers. Then you could use a great tool such as Tweetie and review this Twitter account daily looking for interesting content to retweet or get links from to retweet from your other marketing Twitter accounts.

Therefore what you are really doing is creating a master account to follow those that interest you and sacrificing all of your marketing Twitter accounts, building them up only to send out updates.

As an example, I have 12 Twitter accounts. 10 of these accounts are used for marketing purposes and driving traffic to various web properties that I own. With these 10 accounts I build them up daily with Tweetadder so that they gain a large targeted following. Yet by doing that those 10 accounts are filled with SPAM and reading any updates from within those accounts is essentially useless (thanks to the spammers). So I send out updates and links with those 10 accounts and drive traffic. I use the other two Twitter accounts as follows: one account is my “idea basket”, I send updates to that account with ideas and status updates that I might want to use in the future. The other account is my “master” account or “personal” or “hot list” account (whatever you want to call it) where I follow people that interest me and Twitter accounts that are useful for retweeting purposes etc. I do NOT follow any accounts that are not of special interest to me and therefore I avoid all Twitter SPAM with and it’s always the first account I read each morning which allows me to use Twitter in the way it was intended.

I realize this strategy seems like common sense but you would be surprised how many folks have asked us to help them with their Twitter SPAM problem and when we tell them about the way we handle our Twitter accounts they almost always say “why didn’t I think of that?”, so we decided to share it here and hope that some of you find this approach to Twitter SPAM helpful.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from Facebook users is the massive amount of Game status updates in a users Facebook home page. You’ve probably seen these types of updates sprinkled throughout your Facebook page.

Status updates such as…. “so and so found a Lonely Bull on their farm. Oh no!”. There are times when your entire Facebook home page can be filled up with such updates. And many folks find those types of updates highly distracting when trying to communicate with friends and family.

Turning off or “hiding” game updates is super easy! And here is a quick guide to show you how to do it. First scroll down in your Facebook home page to the first game status update you want to hide. (see image below)

To turn off Mafia Wars updates in your timeline hover your mouse over any Mafia Wars or other game updates. When you move your mouse over the update you will see a “hide” button pop-up in the upper right corner of that status update. (see below)

When you click the “hide” button you will be presented with three choices. (see below)

Now you have the choice to:

1. Hide the friend who made the update
2. Hide updates from that game in your Facebook page
3. Cancel

In this case we want to choose the 2nd option which will hide all Mafia Wars status updates in your timeline. When you click “Hide Mafia Wars” you will get a small alert message stating…

Yay!! No more Mafia Wars status updates in your Facebook home page. Repeat this same process for any other game or Facebook applications that you find distracting and wish to hide.

Hiding friends that you don’t want to “unfriend” yet would prefer to NOT read their status updates works the exact same way, just hide them!

What if you want to “unhide” something that you have hidden in Facebook? It’s easy to unhide friends or application status updates that you have hidden. All you do is click “Top News” in your Facebook home page, then scroll to the very bottom and find the link that says “Edit Options”, click it. You will then get a pop-up screen that allows to unhide friends or applications that you have hidden. Find the application you want to unhide and click “Add to New Feed”. That’s it!

OK, so you have decided to go guns-a-blazing into the Twitter marketing universe. You have your Twitter account(s), and you are making tweets like a madman. Your following is growing and you might even be using handy tools such as Tweet Adder to build a targeted following, but then you hit a road block. Once you have followed 2000 people, Twitter wont let you follow anymore accounts. Why is that? Well, Twitter is trying to make sure that it’s service doesn’t digress into a useless tool of spam. Twitter knows that when a person follows another person that person often follows them back, therefore Twitter marketers generally follow hundreds or thousands of accounts and a large percentage of those accounts follow-back, this creates a “spammy” atmosphere and therefore Twitter has placed limits on the amount of people you can follow. But wait…. are we saying that you can never follow more than 2000 people on Twitter? No, not exactly. The Twitter limit on following people is only in place if the amount of people following you in return is not close (within 10% or so).

Get it? If you are following 2000 people you need to be followed by approximately 2000 people.

Example, lets say you have 1000 people following you and lets say you are following 1999 people. You will hit your “follow limit” the next time you follow a person on Twitter. Then you will not be allowed to follow anymore tweeters with that account.

So what can you do when you hit your follow limit?

You have two options:

1. Reduce the amount of people you are following.

2. Patiently wait and hope that you gain followers simply by making tweets. Once your following is around 2000 you will then be able to start following new people again (although you will need to keep those two numbers close to each other).

We feel the best option is #1. (Reduce the amount of people you are following). Unfollow people who are not following you back. Unfollow spammers. Unfollow tweeters that don’t interest you. The easiest way to accomplish that task is to use a tool such as Tweet Adder that can automate the process of unfollowing accounts that don’t meet the criteria you desire. Tweet Adder also features a great option which is to only unfollow accounts that were generated through Tweet Adder in the first place which insures that you will not accidentally unfollow accounts that you have hand-selected to follow.

The bottom-line is you need to have the number of followers at or around the same number as the amount of people you are following. If you keep the ratio of followers to following around 1.1 to 1 you will never encounter the dreaded Twitter following limits.

Google Buzz is Google’s attempt to capitalize on the growing social media market. Google Buzz integrates into gmail and allows you to share photos, videos, updates and more. One nice feature of Google Buzz is that there is nothing to setup, you are automatically following the people that you email and they are following you back as well. You can share your updates with just your friends or you can share with the entire public. To get all the details go to buzz.google.com or check out the video below.

Yeah, yeah we have heard all the horror stories… cell phones cause brain tumors, and text messaging while driving is now illegal because it’s dangerous. Yet just when everyone is picking on texting we find our that texting can actually save your life! Sure it’s not wise to attempt to send or read text messages while you are driving your car but texting isn’t all bad. Check out this recent story from New Zealand:

Tourist’s texts to Greece save him in New Zealand

A tourist who got lost on a New Zealand mountain was rescued after sending text messages to his family in Greece, newspapers and websites reported on Monday.

Marios Symeonidis was visiting Mount Ruapehu, home to New Zealand’s largest skiing and snowboarding area, this weekend with a friend, but then lost his companion while taking photographs, website www.stuff.co.nz reported.

He was not equipped for an overnight stay and was only wearing light clothing.

Symeonidis sent text messages to his family in Greece, telling them he was lost. They then passed on the information to police in New Zealand via Greek emergency services.

Four teams were dispatched to rescue Symeonidis, who ended up spending the night on the mountain and was then picked up in the morning by another tourist, who drove him to the rescue teams.

Rescue pilot Henry de Waal said Symeonidis was well after his ordeal, and extremely hungry.

source

In a recent article the folks at Mashable did a great job of rounding up stats from analytics company called Net Applications on browser usage on the internet. The good news is that quality browsers such as Chrome and Safari are growing in usage, yet the bad news is the worst browser of all-time Internet Explorer 6 is still the 2nd most popular browser with 20.07% market share.

From the article…

5.20% of the market is actually impressive for a browser as new as Chrome, but Internet Explorer still dominates. IE8 takes up 22.31% of the market and IE7 carries 14.58%, but it’s upsetting to see that IE6 on its own is still the second most popular browser version (behind IE8) at 20.07%.

At Mashable, we’ve made it clear that we believe IE6 must die. It has stifled innovation and left its users vulnerable to security threats for too long, and compared to modern browsers it’s a hassle to use.

Google agrees, and so do many other companies; that’s why it’s phasing out support for the browser, hoping that in doing so it can convince users to either upgrade to a newer version or switch to a competing browser like Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

The good news is that this seems to be working, albeit very, very slowly. IE6 has been declining gradually for months. It just can’t happen quickly enough.

Read the entire Mashable article here.

The following review of Tweet adder is not a “canned” review. I really did buy the product and I really use it everyday. I hope this review will be helpful if you are considering using Tweet adder.

Here we go…
I haven’t been this excited about a product in a long time! Tweet adder is no gimmick and produces great results. Tweet adder is a software product that will help you build-up your Twitter account without the undesired result of a twitter-train scheme (Twitter -trains are bad because the followers you get are not targeted therefore they are a waste of time). Tweet adder is really nothing more than a way to automate the natural and best-practices processes of building up a Twitter account  (i.e., following the right people, unfollowing, following back, etc.). If you are doing all of these steps manually for one or more Twitter accounts, Tweet adder is for you. The best thing is that Tweet adder allows you to put all these processes on auto-pilot so you can be building your Twitter accounts while you are shopping or relaxing in your hot tub.

I cautiously bought Tweet adder about a month ago to see if it would be a good tool for me and I have used it constantly everyday since that time. I have taken several stale Twitter accounts and turned them into valuable marketing resources with the help of Tweet adder. For instance, I had an old Twitter account for a internet forum community that I manage and the account only had 59 followers and wasn’t growing. I didn’t have much time to manually build up the account so it was essentially worthless. I added it to my Tweet adder automated routine and within one week the account now has 360 targeted followers and is sending great traffic to my website. (keep in mind once you build up your Twitter following you still need to make good, compelling tweets to send traffic to your website)

So what is Tweet adder?

Tweet adder is a desktop software application runs on Mac or Windows and allows you to create a large list of folks you would like to follow based on whatever you deem worthy (tweet keywords, profile keywords, location, followers of another user, or users followed by another user). Then you set up Tweet adder to follow a predetermined amount of those users everyday. A large percentage of those users will follow you back and BOOM!! You are now growing your Twitter following with targeted users. And if those users don’t follow you back you can have Tweet adder automatically unfollow them.

My personal favorite Tweet adder strategy is as follows:

- Pick a Twitter user that has followers that I wish were following me (eg. if you had a football website you might want followers that follow the NFL Twitter account).
- Auto create a list of all of those followers and have Tweet adder follow 100 of them per day (or whatever number you want).
- Have Tweet adder auto follow back any user that follows me for any other reason (this builds strong relationships).
- Have Tweet adder auto unfollow users that don’t follow you back after three days (this keeps your Twitter account lean and clean)

Tweet adder can also send automated Tweets, replies and direct messages but I like to do that stuff myself so I don’t use those features although I might in the future when things really start rolling. Currently I have 6 Twitter accounts that tweet adder is building for me and each one is growing every single day.

In a nutshell… Tweet adder automates the tasks that will help you build up your Twitter followers in a real and targeted way. Other Twitter building schemes might be able to get you tons of followers but those followers will likely NOT be targeted and therefore be a waste of time and a distraction to your Twitter marketing campaign. I would rather have 100 targeted followers than 10,000 untargeted followers. When someone asks… “how do I effectively use Twitter to market my website/product” I tell them they need targeted followers and the best way to get targeted followers is to start following people that you want to follow you and unfollow the ones that don’t follow you back (that, combined with making good tweets is the best way to build a twitter account). Tweetadder automates that process and speeds it up so you can build you Twitter account more rapidly via automation, and therefore have time to work on other projects.

Tweet adder offers a free demo so download it today and see for yourself how powerful Tweet adder is.

Have you heard of Google Goggles yet? Google Goggles is a visual based search engine. To search just use your camera on your cell phone. The technology is still new but offers some exciting new capabilities that might make using your cell phone even more productive. Google Goggles is available for Android based cell phones.