Had a blast at the Techcrunch organized August Capital party.

Awesome TC Ice sculpture. Booze provided by Grey Goose:

I helped out 2 at a time:

Photo By Brian Solis

Later on the V.I.P.’s went to the 4 seasons to party on and I met Los Angeles TV Star Shira Lazar, former girlfriend of Kevin Rose:

I asked her if K-Rose dugg her or buried her and she did not think it was funny… =(

Thanks to August Capital & TechCrunch for throwing another great event! Looking forward to the Techcrunch50 conference in September.

While its not quite the 3 wolf moon shirt the ShoeMoney shirt seems to have an undeniable mystic quality about it. Many start out entrepreneurs started out sporting one and soon achieved enormous success.

Congrats Dealoco!!

It seems like everyone is talking about Facebook and MySpace Advertising these days.  There are tons of people making lots of money on conversions from these sites, because of the ability to target such a select audience.  But just because a lot of people are having a lot of success, doesn’t mean that it is easy.  I get emails every day asking me why people’s ads aren’t converting better, or what they are doing wrong.

So I decided to give you guys some tips and a case study for better conversions, aka make more money.  Justin Dupre has written a great case study on Facebook conversions using offers from Tatto Media.  The gist of the post is that one of the hottest niches on Facebook RIGHT NOW is dating.  As we all know if a niche is hot today, that means tons of people will be jumping on board tomorrow.  So even though it was very profitable today, it may not be tomorrow.  But regardless, I’m going to use Justin’s example and expand upon his case study.

And I know there are all levels that read my blog, so I’m going to give a step by step, so feel free to skip ahead.

Step 1:  You need an affiliate network to get the offers to promote

Justin is using two offers in his example, Fling and Mate1, which are both through Tatto Media.  I’m recommending you sign up with Tatto Media because we know these offers are converting, and they have high payouts.  I’m sure other networks have offers that may or may not work, but I’m recommending you stick with what we know works.

Tatto Media, which by the way is a relatively new network, but they have been around for a long while.  Before, they were doing campaigns in house, and have expanded into an affiliate network.  Its a great network to work with, because they have very knowledgeable affiliate managers, and obviously have offers that convert.  I’ve been running some of their offers and they have their own proprietary tracking system that was built from the ground up. So, no DT, no linktrust, etc. I’ve had zero problems with their system and they track very quickly/accurately. The interface is geared for affiliates, and is self serve. You can track their stats by: Impression, click, ctr, leads, erpc, hour, sub, etc.  Enough about them, lets get some ads up and running on FB.

Step 2:  Sign up with Facebook Advertising

If you want to run ads on Facebook, you will of course need an account.  So head here and sign up: http://www.facebook.com/advertising

Step 3:  Ad design/Approval

Facebook is notorious for being very difficult to get ads approved and in a timely manner.  So be patient and persistent.  Justin states that FB doesn’t really like the Fling landing page, so he recommends cloaking it, which you can use AffiliatePlex if you don’t have your own cloaking already.  You will want to say in your ad some other dating site (like match.com), redirect to that site for all internal FB reviews, but for users direct them to the Fling landing page.  Justin uses his example for Ad creation:  Headline should say “Want a Date?”.  Recommending you always use a question mark because it draws attention.  Ad Body should says “Want a date tonight? Meet GIRLS like her on Mate1 and taker her out on a date.  Join today for FREE!”.

Pictures are key!  The size allowed in FB is 110px x 80px.  He recommends you use all of the space you can, and obviously the better looking subject, more skin result in a better CTR (click through rate).  The higher your CTR the lower your CPC (cost per click).  The more clicks you have on an ad will result in a lower cost per click.  We will be running our ads based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions).  So for example, if 1,000 people see your ad, we are paying a set amount to FB for those views, whether they click on our ad or not.  So simple math, the more people that click on the ad, results in hopefully more conversions and a cheaper CPC for us.  You can grab pictures from a lot of different sources online, including flickr, photobucket, etc.

Again this is what worked for Justin and you should create multiple versions with different headlines, different body content, different pictures and track which ones convert the best and run with it.

Step 4: Quality

If you finally get an ad approved for Facebook Advertising, you will quickly find out that just because its on Facebook doesn’t mean you will instantly make a million dollars.  You need quality leads, which means narrowing down who your ad is shown to.  With the case study we are using, he states that you want to make sure to target people that are of course single, and preferably 25 years old and up.  The younger the lead, the less likely he/she is to convert.  That doesn’t mean you can’t play around with the 18-25 year old range, but for this example, 25 and up is it.

Step 4: Trial and Error

You have your account with Tatto Media, and signed up for an advertising account with Facebook.  You even have your ads ready and approved.  Now its time for trial and error.  I recommend studying your results hourly if not more often so you can identify what is working and what isn’t.  This may take days, to hone in on something that will work for you.  But with a little patience, you will be earning some cash in no time.

Recap

So for a recap, you need an account with Tatto Media, so you can have access to the the dating offers Fling and Mate1.  After you have been approved with Tatto, sign up for an account with FB Advertising.  Create your ads, and start making money.  Hopefully this helps people, and I want to thank Justin for a great case study, and check out his personal blog when you get a chance for some great tips.  Thanks again to Tatto Media and Justin for giving us this case study to show you guys how to do a profitable facebook campaign.

Hey folks, it’s Rebecca Kelley here (formally of SEOmoz and currently the Director of Social Media for 10e20, your friendly neighborhood social media marketing company). About a year and a half ago I pulled some guest posts out of my ass for Shoe, and he must have been nostalgic lately because he’s asked me to resume my position as guest blogger. You can look forward to guest posts from me a couple times a week. If that ain’t your cup of tea, avoid the blog when I post while we all have fun without you.

Anyway, one of the things I love about Shoe is what he said in his last post:

So I was talking with the notorious keyboard gangsta Nickycakes a couple weeks ago and telling him how bad I suck as a CEO and really need to get my time management skills in order.

The fact that he acknowledges his CEO suckitude goes to show you that he’s a smart guy (terrible speller, but oh well). I’ve met a lot of businesspeople and douchebags in this industry who either a) refuse to address their shortcomings, or b) know their weaknesses and do absolutely nothing about it. Those are the types of people I can’t stand working with. Either their heads are so far up their asses that they think they can do everything perfectly when in reality they’re effing up everything they get their bumbling hands on, or they go “Yeah, I suck at managing people but oh well, I’m going to keep sucking at it instead of either working to improve my skills or hiring someone who’s better suited for the role.”

Learn something from Jeremy, peeps. If you’re not good at something, either become good at it or, if you’re still unable to get good at it for whatever reason (like if you’re too wimpy to fire someone or you’re too scatterbrained to handle accounting stuff), find someone to fill the void and strengthen your company or team.  If you’re too ignorant, dumb or stubborn to acknowledge your shortcomings and come up with a solution, you’re only hurting yourself and the success of your business.

So there you have it, my triumphant return to guest posting for Shoe. I kept it short and sweet. Hopefully my next one will be a bit meatier and contain  more swear words and poop jokes. Tune in later this week to find out!

This Friday I will be speaking at Guy Kawasaki’s Revenue Bootcamp with the recently named “Sexiest Single Indian Millionaire” in America – Neil Patel:

Neil Patel - Americas Sexiest Single Indian Millionaire

Then we are headed to the Techcrunch/August Capital Event in Redwood City.

Techcrunch Events (techcrunch40/50, techcrunch awards) are always the site of some truly amazing networking for me. Plus, being I am from the press team means I get to harass inteview people like Mark Zuckerberg, Kevin Rose, Mc Hammer, Ashton Kutcher or any of the other internet rock stars that might show up:

Founder of digg.com - Kevin Rose

Tickets are only $20 to the night event and there will be food and booze. Trust me, if you are local or even close and can make this event you are a complete idiot if you don’t!!!!!

Get your tickets here while they are available.

I would just like to once again thank Michael Arrington, Heather, and Daniel Brusilovsky for recognizing a quality journalism and giving me a press pass.

Last Friday, after years of frustration with Sprint, and seeing the busted Palm Pre in action, I decided to give the iPhone a try. I had many concerns about switching… mostly because of AT&T network but I had some other valid concerns as well.

To refer to my phone as a phone is kind of silly. I actually talk on the device probably less then 5% of the time. I rarely take phone calls and even more rarely make them. I use a service called phonetag to transcribe all voice mails to email and send them to me which I then reply in email.

With my Sprint phones over the years I have used my “smart phones” mostly for texting and emailing. I never really browsed the internet with them. The lack of css/js support mixed with phone CPU speed and network speed just made it worthless.

I have been receiving so many emails about switching to the iPhone since my post about me leaving sprint that I decided to do a little mini review discussing my concerns and what I have found. Please keep in mind its only been 2 weeks (almost) and I will write a 90 day review or so and probably have some things to bitch about then.

The Cost

While this was not a big concern to me it was with the commentators in my leaving Sprint post. Lots of people were saying that our company would be paying a lot more for the iPhone plans then with what we had with Sprint. Surprisingly we will be saving about $3,000 per year with At&t over Sprint. We are on a shared business plan with rollover minutes and the cost savings is pretty substantial. I am fairly certain they do not have a similar thing on Sprint because we were always asking our reps if we should move to a better plan and they always said we had the best one so either they were lying to us or they can’t compete price wise.

Network Coverage

Network Coverage was far and away my biggest concern in switching from Spring to At&t. I don’t talk much but when I do talk its important and the rumors of dropped calls really frightened me. When I purchased the iPhone the salesman at the At&t store said that here in Lincoln Nebraska we actually have some of the best iPhone data speeds in the world being they JUST rolled out new hardware not to long ago. I still was not fully convinced so I started talking to other customers as they were walking in to trade in their iPhones for new ones. The testimonials from the customers was enough to make me take the leap and get one.

At my house is supposed to be a “Dead Zone” which I wasn’t thrilled about but I have to say the phone works great there. I get 2-3 bars at worst and have never missed a call yet. The same is true for my office which is only a block away from my house. I am still leery though and have no delusions that the coverage will be perfect. Even some of my friends who are the biggest Mactards have told me to expect some dropped calls.

Like I said though so far so good. I have gone around rural Nebraska and the AT&T coverage is as good as Sprints…. if not better to my surprise.

Battery

The battery life was my 2nd biggest concern about switching to the iPhone. I would say the battery life for regular use is as good as the Blackberry. When I first got the iPhone I could not stop playing some of the tower defense games and they wore it down pretty fast… but what do you expect. I picked up a battery extender/charger to travel with me.

Keyboard

Another concern was the keyboard. Ever since my first “smart phone” I have always really enjoyed having a full keyboard on my phone. I was really worried about what the touch screen would be like. But just like what everyone told me it would take less then a week to be good with the touch screen keyboard. I wish every application let you type in landscape mode. I am considerably faster in landscape mode versus normal but maybe that will improve. I am happy with the keyboard and I LOVE the auto correct.

Applications

Unreal.. just totally completely unreal. Lets not even get into 3rd party apps. I will just cover the Apple ones for now:

1) Mail – The mail app rocks and has awesome integration with Gmail hosted email.

Just like the blackberry it does support PUSH if you use their delivery service (.me) BUT also just like the blackberry if you do use the PUSH service it creates some complications with IMAP. We are using GMAIL for our domain and the integration works awesome with the mail application.

2) Photos – I cant tell you how many times I see people and they ask to see pictures of my kids. And I never have them… or if I did have them on the blackberry (on the couple MB of storage it had) they were very very very bad quality. I have over 10,000 pictures on my iPhone at full quality dating back over 8 years. This takes up less then 1% of the space on my iPhone and its really nice to have when I want to show someone something.

3) Safari – Probably the most impressive default application. Apple really outdid themselves with this web browsing application on the iPhone.

Usability

This device replaced many things for me. And I don’t mean some bullshit “in theory it can do it” I am actively replacing these items.

• iPod – The 3GS also has a built in Nike+ receiver which is awesome for workouts.
• Portable movie player – With the large 32gb storage capacity I can store tons of dvd-rips for viewing while traveling.
• My Laptop – Sure it has not TOTALLY replaced my there are very few things that I can’t do with my iPhone.
• Dictaphone – With the Voxie iPhone application I can record myself and send it to myself, to my secretary, or to be transcribed by their professional transcription services. THIS ROCKS. I can now just talk into my iphone and get emailed text for blog posts or whatever else I want.
• Camera – Yea I hear you… “but $hoe every phone has a camera”, but seriously how many times have you actually had a photo printed and framed with your .5mp camera phone. I dunno what the mp was on the blackberry but it was shit. I went to our nanny’s wedding last weekend and I took photos with the 3gs while my wife used our cannon 8mp point and shoot. I would say my photos turned out every bit as good as my wifes if not better. Here is one photo I took with my iPhone of the happy couple with my kids:

6 – Flip Video Camera – With the iPhone I can record nice video and directly upload to youtube. The quality is good enough for youtube so why do I need a flip anymore? Checkout this video from last weekend getting my toenails painted with my daughter (I gotta learn to get my finger out of the way):

Sure I am not going to be up for any best picture nominations anytime soon but seriously its plenty good enough for the stuff I am playing with.

If you are thinking bout getting an iPhone I would first encourage you to talk with other AT&T subscribers in your area. If the service is good to go then go for it!

There is a 30 day window you can return it and get a full refund should it not be everything you thought it was.

If money is a problem you can always sign up to win one of 2 iPhone 3GS’s being given away by Brian Norgard!