I can’t believe I’m only getting around to posting this now! Last Saturday I got a chance to go to the Irish Web Awards in the Radison SAS Royal Hotel in Dublin. I have to say it was a great night and a big thank you should go to Damien and the rest of the organisers for putting on an event which isn’t one of those typical back slapping award ceremonies but more for deserving sites which are actually used and appreciated by the online irish community. Below are just some of the pics from the night, check out awards.ie for further details:

Congratulations to all the winners.

Headline Sponsor – Realex Payments

The winners are:

Best Online Publication – sponsored by Maximise

• The Irish TImes

Best Radio Website – sponsored by IGOPeople

• Phantom

Best Podcaster – sponsored by 3 Ireland

• The Persuaders

Best Videocaster – Sponsored by Irish Mortgage Brokers

• Look and Taste

Best Sports Site – sponsored by ArgusCarHire.com

• RTE Sport

Best Music Site – sponsored by Poll Daddy

• Nialler9

Best Entertainment Website – sponsored by Radical

• Entertainment.ie

Best Arts Website – Sponsored by Brennan Sabatini

• Dance Ireland

Best Technology Site – Sponsored by BH Consulting

• Silicon Republic

Best New Web Application/Service – Sponsored by Red Cardinal

• Kildare Street

Most Innovative Website – Sponsored by iQ content

• Decisions for Heroes

Best Discussion forum – sponsored by KRO IT Solutions

• Boards

Best Government and Council Website

• IDA Ireland

Best Education and Third Level Website – sponsored by National Digital Research Centre

• Talk Irish

Best eCommerce / Services Website – sponsored by Cybercom

• Curious Wines

Most Beautiful Website in Ireland – Sponsored by Beaut.ie

• Organic Supermarket

Most Useful Website in Ireland – Sponsored by DoneDeal.ie

• RTE

Best Social Media Campaign – Sponsored by OnlineAdvertising.ie

• Count Me Out

Best Practice – Sponsored by Spinnakerpro.com

• Cars Ireland

An Suíomh Gaeilge is Fear – sponsored by Edgecast Media

• NOSMag

Most Accessible Website – Sponsored by Insure.ie

• Rose Project

Best Website in Ireland – Sponsored by Realex Payments

• RTE.ie

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Ok, this week I have 2 good events in Dublin I’ll be attending. It is always good to meet up with other people involved in online ventures, it comes in handy when you need to promote something online or just for putting a face to who you’ve been talking to on Twitter.

The first event I’ll be attending is the BTW (Blogger Twitter Whatever) event being organised by Jason Roe in the Clarion in Dublin on the 3rd Sept. There is capacity for 150 and at the time of writing this there are still a few places free. I think one of the trending topics of conversation will be the debate started by Niall Harbison of simplyzesty.com on whether bloggers and pr fit together.

The second event I’ll be attending is an opportunity to meet with Brad Fallon. Brad will be speaking at a free marketing seminar in Dublin, tickets can be aquired for free from http://www.ultimatemarketingseminar.eu/. Thanks to Kevin from InternetMoney.ie and Kieran from Searchbrat.com for reminding me of this event.

So if your at either of these events come up and say hello!

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Lately I’ve been really interested in the psychology behind peoples searches and how they interact online. i.e. people that search for “buy blue widgets” are more likely to buy that people searching for “blue widget styles”. This area has a huge influence on what and how you should structure your content and manage your email marketing.

One of the best guys to listen to in this area is Frank Kern. Frank is a surfer dude but also a people person and you can tell he just “gets it” when it comes to influencing peoples emotions online. Hell, if you search for him online, you’ll get nothing but references about how people feel he’s their friend and what an all around nice guy he is.

If you do a little more digging you’ll find that Frank was once busted by the FTC for running an alleged pyramid scheme. Now in saying that, it doesnt make him a bad guy, think Frank Abagnale from Catch Me If You Can or any good grifter. They all have talents for reading or convincing people, they just mightnt have always used them for ethical purposes. He openly admits this and actually when you think about it he must have been succesful at marketing it as at the time he was making half a million a year.

The video above is what Frank released as a promo for his Mass Control program. The information he gives away is amazing. He discusses modalities, the persona we need to portray when selling online, developing story lines to interact and engage with potential customers. Now I’m not telling you to buy Franks products, just watch the video and if you think the info is good enough, make up your own mind.

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Last night I had the pleasure of taking part in a webinar hosted by Mark Ling from Affilorama.com . In the webinar he conducted an interview with Brian Johnson from Commission Ritual. You might know Brian also from SEO Press Formula. Brian is a seasoned affiliate and in the interview he offers tips on:

• Selecting Affiliate Campaigns
• Building Affiliate Sites
• Obtaining Backlinks
• Content Creation
• Email Subscriber List Building
• Plugin Management
• How to increase earnings in a niche

Luckily for me and you Mark has actually put the webinar online and I’ve embedded it below. The interview lasts for over an hour so it might take a second to load. Check it out !

In the next few days I hope to follow up on this post with further tips on how to obtain quality backlinks!

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There are a lot of bloggers that I read on a regular basis. As someone interested in internet marketing, you should be an avid reader of people in the niche so you can keep up with tips and trends in the industry. The main areas I would follow are affiliate marketing, new media, seo & sem.

Now with Affiliate Bloggers, I’m used to seeing paid posts. This is normal, their aim is to make money online so why wouldn’t they do paid posts. I have no problem with this, most put up disclaimers when they do it. What I do have a problem with is when they plug bullshit especially when it’s a paid post.

Think about it? You spend months writing good content, build up your readership levels so you have some influence in your area and then you blow it by doing a plug for a dodgy product or service. Why would you do it?, let alone do it for just $250 bucks, well thats the question I ask Tyler Cruz.

I’ve never met Tyler or corresponded with him but I have been an avid reader of his blog. Why? The No. 1 reason is his honesty. He’s not afraid to disclose the affiliate sites he runs, he shows you his earnings, even his weight loss battle! So you can imagine my disappointment when I came across a paid post for Usocial.net?

Why am I dissapointed?

I’m not dissapointed that its a paid post but in the product he’s chosen to promote for $250. I mean the advertisers own hype isn’t even real. If you look on usocial’s own twitter services page they claim to have 18,000 followers on twitter, yet when you check twitter.com/usocialdotnet ,they only have 14,000 followers.

Secondly they are selling services which claim to get you up to 100,000 followers yet they only have 14,000. When you search for a review of their service, I could only find one valid review of their digg service ( http://www.pokeraffiliatelistings.com/forums/general-poker-affiliate-forum/514-usocial-net-review.html ) which wasn’t very promising. Basically the reviewer said that all their diggs had come from newly created accounts.

This is interesting when you consider their wording for their twitter services:

“we’ll bring you 2,500 brand new Twitter followers to your existing account”

The key here is “brand new”, what good is that for marketing purposes? There all bogus accounts! Any other reviews I could find were all created by Alexa Darver an Affiliate whoose identical review is everywhere. Even in a legitimate media article (http://www.mediabuzz.com.sg/asian-emarketing/march-april-2009/353-usocialnet-creating-a-buzz-in-the-social-media-scene), they state themselves that they are just creating accounts:

“instead of selling a software and leaving the users alone with the hassle of creating needed accounts and spending time submitting their links every day, they offer a compact and simple solution”

I enjoy Tylers blog and I will keep reading but in this case, I think it would have been worth Tyler spending 5 mins vetting the advertiser. Is it worth the potential damage it can do to your reputation for plugging an inferior service for $250? You decide!

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