The opening keynote address at the recent Add-on-Con conference (December 11, 2008, Mountain View, California) focused on how to make money producing and/or distributing browser add-ons.

You know, those cool little add-ons or ‘plugins’ such as the Alexa toolbar or SEO for Firefox.

The consensus was that, in general, the same monetization methods available for websites are available for browser add-ons. The models cited included selling ad space (i.e within the add-on), promoting affiliate products, and building and selling add-ons to other companies.

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Andrew Warner recently commented on my article, 3 Tips For Viral Marketing Success. It turns out that Andrew recently interviewed viral marketing ‘guru’, Hiten Shah, partner at ACS SEO and a guy who has helped grow online traffic for major tech players such as TechCrunch, Guy Kawasaki, HP and Samsung.

During the interview, Shah revealed a number of powerful techniques he recommends for optimizing viral marketing campaigns. Here are six (6) such techniques - techniques you may wish to consider using in one or more of YOUR viral marketing initiatives:

1. Use a ‘beat me’ or competitive approach. Websites that allow users to challenge each other are inherently viral. For example, eduFire.com went viral by allowing its users to play language games and then challenge friends to score higher.
2. Require people to refer others to the viral application or content in order to benefit. Put it this way, no-one can use Skype… unless others also use Skype. And the same goes for numerous other applications and services, ranging from email to PayPal.
3. Let people show off - let people create or contribute content, and share what they’ve created. Doing so is a major reason behind the viral success of GE’s online whiteboard.
4. Encourage people to share - make it super-easy for users to share and embed your content. Who does this exceptionally well? YouTube!
5. Give people something to boast about - give people something to brag or boast about… and they will! For example, when Feedburner created a badge allowing bloggers to show how many readers they had, bloggers everywhere began displaying Feedburner badges – leading to Feedburner’s growth.
6. Measure your progress - measure your viral growth to see what is working… and what isn’t… and make changes accordingly.

To learn more powerful viral marketing techniques, click here to listen to the full interview between Andrew and Hiten Shah.

Source: Andrew Warner, “7 Essential Tools of Viral Marketing - The Hiten Shah Interview”, Mixergy.com, September 5, 2008

Here’s a heads up for search engine optimizers and others who care about Google PageRank - that imperfect measure of webpage popularity that everyone cares enough about to say they don’t care about…

According to Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, new toolbar PageRank values will become visible over the next few days. Some webmasters will be relieved to hear that Google also plans to expire some older penalties on websites. Although others will probably find themselves newly penalized!

Source: Matt Cutts, “New Toolbar PageRanks Coming,” Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO, July 24, 2008

Yesterday, I hinted at some stunning results uncovered by Enquiro and MarketingSherpa about what searchers see when they use search engines.

Well, here it is…

According to the research, almost no searchers look at the right side of the page!

So… if you run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google or Yahoo, for example, almost no-one will see your ad when they search because, except for the first three PPC ads, all the ads are displayed on the right side of the page.

Now, there is a slight difference if the searchers are specifically looking for something to buy. In this case, a few more of them will look at the top-right ads. The vast majority, however, will still focus on the listings on the left.

Does that mean you should abandon your PPC efforts? NO!

A well crafted PPC campaign is a powerful and cost-effective way to generate qualified traffic to your website.

Remember, you only pay per click. Sure, only a small minority of searchers may see your ad. But if you still generate profitable sales by getting enough of them to click through and buy from you, then there’s no question that you should continue your PPC campaign.

HOWEVER, what the research does mean is that you must invest in search engine optimization to get your listing seen by the majority of searchers.

Otherwise, you are ignoring - or should I say, being ignored by - the vast majority of searchers… and leaving money on the table.

Now, there’s one more result from the research that impacts on your SEO and PPC efforts. I’ll share it with you in Monday’s issue of Kikabink News.

Source: Anne Holland, “Search Engine Marketing: Top Five Eye-Tracking Laboratory Test Results”, MarketingSherpa, January 4, 2006