At 0.051 percent, the average Facebook ad click-through rate (CTR) is just over half the banner ad CTR for Internet ad networks in general (see Average Banner Ad Click-Through Rate (CTR) Stabilizes at 0.09 Percent).

Not only do ads on Facebook have relatively low CTRs compared with banner ads in general, but their effectiveness wanes after just a few days. According to Webtrends’ analysis of over 11,200 advertising campaigns on Facebook in 2009, the average CTR HALVES within two days.

Ed Dale’s Melbourne Challenge Conference will take place on February 25, 26 and 27, 2011 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, in Melbourne, Australia. Aimed at beginning-to-advanced Internet marketers, conference organiser Ed Dale says the event will include presentations from top-notch speakers including SEO expert, Leslie Rohde, super-affiliate Lynn Terry, and copywriting expert and NLP master, Harlan Kilstein. The event is a must-attend for Australian based Internet marketers (normally starved of quality Internet marketing events) and highly recommended for overseas visitors. Just be sure to bring swimwear and sunscreen to get the most out of gorgeous Melbourne in summer! Go here for all the details including how to get tickets.

Internet Marketing Events Calendar »

Formstack, which provides tools to help you build web forms, reckons it knows exactly how the ‘perfect’ landing page should look and work. In fact, the company has posted a page that displays, dissects and explains each element of the perfect landing page which you can view here.

Basing its dissection of the perfect landing page on the work of Performable, Color Matters and KissMetrics, Formstack provides the general layout of the perfect landing page, along with recommendations about such items as the headlines, copy, buttons, images, videos, calls to action, colors and more.

We generally don’t buy or rent email lists. The margin for error (i.e. wasting money on unqualified leads) is often quite high. In some circumstances, however, it may be appropriate to buy or rent an online list.

So, if you are planning to buy or rent an online list, here are five (5) tips to help ensure you get your money’s worth.

Want to create the ‘Facebook’ of your niche? If so, according to Gina Bianchini, your success in creating a profitable social network will depend on the extent to which it meets seven key design principles.

Gina should know. As the founder of Ning – a platform for creating niche social networks – she’s seen people and companies build literally thousands of social networks. Right now, Ning has around 70,000 paying customers and draws more than 80 million unique visitors per month across its sites.

It’s probably no surprise that people are more likely to open and click on emails from friends and family than from email marketers. Furthermore, research from Experian Marketing Services’ CheetahMail® also shows that offers sent by friends and family likewise get higher open rates and click-through rates (CTRs) than emails sent by email marketers.

According to Experian CheetahMail’s study, friends-and-family emails outperformed commercial emails in a number of ways, having:

Today we profile Andrew Follett and the website optimization service he co-founded, Concept Feedback.

Q: What is your background (e.g. previous businesses or career) and why did you decide to start an Internet company?

A: Before starting Concept Feedback, I worked as a marketing director at a small business in the environmental services industry. I was in charge of managing multiple websites and online marketing campaigns.

Q: What is Concept Feedback, when did it start, and what led you to create it?

A: Concept Feedback offers quick, actionable website feedback from a hand-selected panel of experts in design, usability and strategy. Evaluations are completed in 48 hours or less using our written and visual feedback tools, which make it easy to organize and prioritize recommendations.

Search engine marketers shouldn’t ignore search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Indeed, if you engage in paid search advertising or search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns, you’ll get even higher brand visibility, trust and sales by combining SEM with SEO.

Research by iProspect echoes earlier studies showing that brands with high visibility in both the paid and organic search engine results elicit greater recognition, trust and purchasing among consumers than paid search advertising alone.

Four months after News Corporation erected paywalls on its websites for The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers, readership has plummeted from an estimated 3 million free readers to around 200,000 monthly paid subscribers.

This includes just over 50,000 online-only subscribers, 100,000 print subscribers who have also activated online subscriptions, and ad-hoc sales.

If you want to maximize website conversions – whether a ‘conversion’ is getting a web visitor to click on an ad, fill in a form, buy a product or perform some other action – split-testing web pages is a must.

By conducting even the simplest A-B split-test – where you randomly display one of two different versions of a given web page to your website visitors – you’ll be able to see which elements work best to elicit conversions. You can then modify your site accordingly, leading to higher overall conversions, sales and profits.