Online advertising costs explained

The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM, CPC, and CPA.

Online advertising costs explained (via wikipedia):

• CPM (Cost Per Mille) or CPT (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) is when advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience. "Per mille" means per thousand impressions, or loads of an advertisement. However, some impressions may not be counted, such as a reload or internal user action.
• CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) is when advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allows advertising specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market. Under the Pay per click pricing system, advertisers pay for the right to be listed under a series of target rich words that direct relevant traffic to their website, and pay only when someone clicks on their listing which links directly to their website. CPC differs from CPV in that each click is paid for regardless of whether the user makes it to the target site. CPL (Cost Per Lead), CPS (Cost Per Sale), PPS (Pay Per Sale), or CPO (Cost Per Order)
• CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPF (Pay Per Performance) advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the ad, and the advertiser pays only for the number of users who complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up. This model ignores any inefficiency in the seller's web site conversion funnel. The following are common variants of CPA:
• CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is when advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.
• CPV (Cost Per View) is when advertisers pay for each unique user view of an advertisement or website (usually used with pop-ups, pop-unders and interstitial ads).
• eCPM: Effective CPM or eCPM calculated through other conversion events such as Cost per Clicks, Cost per Downloads, Cost per Leads etc. for example when an advertiser getting $2 per download and for 100,000 impressions you received 10 downloads worth $20, in this case your effective CPM or eCPM will be 2*20*1000/100,000= $0.4
• Fixed Cost: Advertiser paying fixed cost for delivery frame by campaign flight dates without any relevance to performance
• Cost per conversion Describes the cost of acquiring a customer, typically calculated by dividing the total cost of an ad campaign by the number of conversions. The definition of "Conversion" varies depending on the situation: it is sometimes considered to be a lead, a sale, or a purchase.

The Super Quick Guide to Begin Selling Online

A Quick Start Guide to Online Selling:
step 1. choose a domain name.
step 2. buy a hosting plan
step 3. choose an open source ecommerce platform to use
step 4. install the application and customize it.
step 5. add content to your site, add products, payment gateways, shipping conditions.
step 6. add Google Analytics, and Google Webmaster Tools.
step 7. do some SEO.
step 8. add a content section, like a blog, to your eshop (install wordpress on a subdomain)
step 9. begin marketing campaigns (Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, banner ads etc)
step 10. start receiving orders.

Although it might seem very simple, it is not. But with a little bit of hard work and determination, anyone can begin to sell online.

What is internet marketing?

Internet marketing is a broad term that generates confusion.
Online marketing, also known as online advertisement, internet marketing, online marketing or e-marketing, is the marketing and promotion of products or services over the Internet.
As the internet itself, internet marketing is constantly changing and evolving.


 Internet Marketing in Simple English

Quora blog

Quora announced recently that you can now build a blog on their platform.
Quora has great SEO and a big audience.

Starting today you can create Blogs on Quora. Blogs allow you to share your thoughts in a space that you control -- without the structure of Q&A, but with the same distribution potential and engagement. Blogs are great for people who want an audience, but don't have an established blog already.

Introducing Blogs on Quora

Improve your business using social media

How to use social media to improve a business, a product and customer service?
An awesome video about the opportunity social media provides for a company.

It's oficial: SEO is now SSEO

SEO just got Social.
Google announced last year 'Search plus your world', and now with the recent introduction of the Facebook's Graph Search I think it's safe to say that Social Search Engine Optimization will soon became the new norm.
Don't get me wrong I don't think Facebook's Graph Search will be a huge success, in fact I believe that at the moment there is not so much value there, but I'm sure that they will improve - like adding the possibility to comment on every thing you like. And I also believe this will push Google to speed up the process socializing it's search.

So what does this mean?
Well after the last Google algorithm updates we all agree that there is no fooling google left, and we all know that we need good quality content. The old hunt for backlinks is now useless, the linkwheels of the past are long dead.

I'm absolutely sure that Google is soon to make a move, pushing the limits with some new changes making search more social.

Good unique quality shareable content is just not enough I belive we'll soon found ourselves spending a lot of the time searching for people, commenting on posts , trying by all means to get into people's graphs. This will in turn make the new social search returning more and more irelevant results, forcing them to improve, but this is something we already been through.

And this is not all wait to see the raise of Black hat SSEO - this will fill our social graph with so much crap that again people will get mad, just like they did back in the day of blog spamming.

If history taught us something is that we need to be smart upfront, unless we want to be kicked again this time by the social pandas and penguins of the future. The smart thing to do is not to start a new LIKE race as opposed to the old backlink frenzy but instead build communities around you and around your clients. Apply the 80/20 rule that Mackenzie Fogelson talks about and try to build an actual real relationship with your clients - that kind of relationship that makes them want to re-share your stuff just like in the old days made them want to post a link to you on their blogs.

This entire new personalized world would eventually came as a great new thing that I'm sure will improve our lives.

Regarding search engine optimization,  if up until now SEO and SMM were two pieces of the internet marketing pie I think now they merged - you sure can't have one without the other.

SEO facts - Did you know?

Did you know that 82% of all the clicks on search results in engines like Google & Bing go to the unpaid, organic results and only 18% go to paid listings.

Top 10 SEO ranking factors:
1. Relevance
2. User Experience
3. Popularity
4. Quality
5. Accessibility
6. Branding/Ubiquity
7. UI/Design
8. Engagement
9. Freshness
10. Speed
From: An Interview with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz