An interesting look into which companies are spending the most money on advertising online.

Tatto Media is an advertising network that is based on the earlier mentioned HasOffers backend.  HasOffers basically allows anyone to start their own affiliate network and run with it based around their offers, however Tatto Media goes a step further to get exclusive offers, in-house advertising and their own proprietary tracking system.So just how well does Tatto deliver in terms of their offer scope and ease of use? Well we shall take a closer look and find out.

In terms of helping publishers Tattoo employs three different models, all of which have their own benefits and advantages.  There are Display ads, Performance based ads, and a new outlet of Virtual Currency which has exploded as of late. (i.e. Zynga)

Display Ads

I’m sure you are all familiar with as they are the typical offers that pay per impression, while the payout is relatively low, if you have a high traffic site that isn’t really targetted all that well you can make some decent coin.  An example would be a site catering tofunny pictures, while most people are not looking at the ads, you may have a ton of viral traffic, in which case display ads would be most suited for you.

Performance Ads

If you’ve been in the affiliate marketing game for some time I’m sure you are familiar with these.  These offers are based on leads generated and Tatto Media delivers with some great offers in a pretty broad range of niches.  Affiliates are able to manage their own tracking pixels without the need for manager help and the fact that its all self-managed is pretty cool.

Virtual Currency

If you have done any facebook applications or have used any online applications with virtual currency, you know just how compelling and viral these applications can be. Tatto Media fills that need by providing affiliates a way to monetize their own apps with a revenue per user based model that seems lucrative.  I haven’t personally used this but if you are in the virtual currency sector this is definitely something you want to look into.

Compared to other networks, Tatto Media prides itself on their unique tracking system, and having worked with Linkshare and Directtrack networks for so long, it is a nice change of pace.  Tatto Media also houses their own exclusive offers so that means direct payouts and higher ROI’s for pubs.

Another great feature is their affiliate backend snapshot where you can visually see you stats right when you login, something I’m sure most of you guys want to see.  They offer weekly payouts for wires and even paypal which is a great benefit if your like me and keep a fair chunk of change online.

Overall I’d have to say that Tatto is a solid network with a great selection of offers, and with the added incentive of in-house offers, you get higher payouts, easier tracking and above all that’s going to be more money in your pocket.

Check out Tatto Media today.

Yeah so I thought I’d go ahead and flex my e-peen and let you all know that I just copped a Blackberry Bold.  While the haters out there are already telling me I shoulda got the new Blackberry “Storm” that’s coming out, I frankly don’t see you haters, and because my old phone was such a piece of shit, ANY phone would be better.

New Phone:

Old Phone:

You can obviously see the ginormous difference between the two.  Anyways lets hope this builds upon the creativity and networking capabilities that I was so limited to before. With msn/aim/twitterberry all loaded onto my handheld, I think I’ll be able to keep up where ever I am.  All i need now is IRC and id be complete…oh IRC for blackberry, where art thou?

I was also in awe that I could load up a gigaton of e-books in .pdf format and now can read them where ever I please.  This is a huge bonus, because I hardly have time to sit at my computer and read e-books.  I got my music setup on there, custom ringtones so the ladies know im ballin, and the camera actually doesn’t suck, I think its a 2.0 megapixel.  The only downside is that I need to wear a proverbial phone-bra since the phone is really delicate, and i’ve heard some horror stories about it being dropped once and never to return.

Another huge plus is having connectivity to my email accounts, as well as the fact that I can browse the web for only the price of a small car every month.  (okay well its not that bad, but seriously our data plans SUCK in Canada.)

All in all its a great phone, has everything you need, and while it may not have all the apps of the iphone, it still holds its own.  Anyone out there who is looking to upgrade their curve’s or the like should look into the bold. If anyone knows where I can get some bootleg apps for blackberry’s please let me know.

While most SEO’s already know the ins and outs of off-site search engine optimization, but what often gets overlooked is the actual on-site SEO which may be a key reason as to why you are not at the top of the SERP’s. I’ve compiled a list of things the beginner SEO can do to make sure his or her site is fully optimized for the search engines.

1. The Title Tag – Single handedly the most crucial element of on-site optimization. Make sure you have your main keywords in here. A useful plug-in for this if your using Wordpress is optimal title.
2. The H1/H2 Text – Are also extremely important because they show the search engine the main subjects and “table of contents” for your sites content. These should be targeted towards the keywords you want to rank for, and should be indicative of your title tag.
3. First sentence of body text – In terms of advanced SEO tactics, the first sentence for the body for every page on your site will be picked up by the SE’s and more importantly are picked up by Google’s LSI algorithm.
4. Meta Keywords, Description and Robots Tag — The site’s meta tags are always used to place your site in the rankings. As well your sitemap.xml will be looked at by Google on a regular basis so keep it updated.
5. The Body Text – Try to keep your focused body text in bold as this will be more emphatic to the search engines.
6. The URL — The subdirectory folder and page of content should be optimized. A useful way to do this with wordpress is through permalinks. (Settings -> Permalinks -> Custom Structure, and then use “/%category%/%postname%/”) So for http://site.com/SEO-optimization-in-toronto.html would rank higher for a page devoted to “SEO optimization in Toronto” simply due to this structure.
7. Same Site Link Texts — Make sure all your pages of your site are inter-linked or have some type of navigation whereas your main pages you are trying to rank for are linked. Make sense? Having your targeted keywords linked to other relevant pages can go a long way for a little higher rankings.
8. Same-Site Link URLs — Don’t just use keywords to describe pages inside your site, those URLs you link to should include SEO URLs as well. (eg: http://site.com/your-keyword.html)
9. Keyword Density — While this topic is generally up for debate, the general consensus is to have anywhere between 5-8% of your total text. So for a 500 word article you should have anywhere between 25-40 of those words as some sort of derivative of the keyword you are trying to rank for. While this isn’t THAT important for rankings, it should still be considered.
10. Image ALT Tags — Lastly you should always make sure to have your images optimized for keywords you wish to rank for. It wouldn’t hurt to go as far as to change the names of the images to be keyword-rich as well.

By using these simple methods, you can get a jump start on your off-site SEO so that you can focus more on getting inbound, authority backlinks from relevant sites. Then all you can do from there is write viral content and link build like a madman. I will be doing a follow up post on off-site SEO methods so stay tuned.

Sort of a continuation of my previous post, Firefox has decided to take it one step further and attempt to set a world record for most software downloads in 24 hours, and if anyone can do it, Firefox 3 can.

They have setup an affiliate page in pretty much every language you can think of with banners like the one below, so if you haven’t already, click below and pledge your allegiance to Firefox 3, and help set a world record. And if you decide to sign up to their affiliate program over at spreadfirefox.com you can earn points for your efforts which can win you t-shirts, if thats your thing.

At the time of writing this they are at roughly 175,000 users who pledged to download on the release day, and firefox itself had been downloaded 562992952 times, finally people are pushing IE under the carpet.

So go ahead and pledge to download Firefox 3 and set a Guinness World Record. I voted but im pretty sure it will come down to what the superdelegates want.

Update:

Download day is today!

This has been a hot topic in the SEO world for the past while now. I want to drop my bit of wisdom and share from experience what I have seen and heard. Many say that site wide links are extremely harmful and that search engines such as Google are now penalizing sites for this. Others say it is very profitable as a simple link exchange across one site can provide you with hundreds or even thousands of good links. So what to think for this?

I personally have many site wide link exchanges and from this I have learned a few things:

• Do not get to many to fast! The age of your site and the age of the linking site is of ultimate importance here. You do not want to exhcange links with every site out there just because you can. Be picky and choose sites that have been in existence longer than 1 year, sites that have good SE rankings, sites with a decent page rank, and sites with like content.
• Think before you act! Research the site(s) you plan to request a site wide link from. See how they stack up against their competition. Make sure your link won’t be #196 on the site. Does the site provide legitimate and helpful content? These are just a few of the factors to research.
• Don’t always seek after site wide link exchanges! Just like you don’t always order the exact same things at a restaurant, don’t ONLY go for site wide links.
• Try to get some links on specific articles pertaining to your site’s content, try to get a single link in a visible area on a high trafficed site, and so on.

I hope this clears up a bit of confusion. Site wide links can be a very good thing when used effectively and in moderation!