PJMorrow.com: Banned in China!

Hey folks, stopping in today from an internet cafe in downtown Shanghai. I'm doing an internship in the marketing department of a company called Urbanatomy. I help a little bit with internet marketing too.

It's a little annoying updating this blog from China because it's banned here. Someone said it might be because I use blogspot, but I have other blogs of mine on blogspot which work. So there ya go. Banned.

I can post because I can reach my dashboard and update any of my blogs - but I can't view this one. I have to just visualize it based on the HTML. I haven't made any tweaks to my template because I'm afraid of the whole thing going wacky.

I touch down in Toronto on August 10, a place where I am not banned. I miss seeing my blog :(

I've almost doubled my monthly earnings. When you look at my past ones, that's not that big of a difference. But the way things are trending, I don't see them going back down for any reason. Just further up. Cheers to that.

How to be a Fool: Post Links to Useless Websites

You know how I know a website is great? When it links to Agloco. Not only is the description of it flawed, i.e. it says 'get paid to surf online!' because we all know Agloco paid nobody, but the website doesn't even exist still.

If you run a website, you must always keep in mind that people can still come to your site to view old posts. Try doing a spring cleaning of your older posts to remove dead links or links to places that are of no use to your readers nowadays.

There are several practical reasons to do this. First of all, on an intangible note, you will be annoying your readers. When you give a link, the only thing that should matter is whether it's useful to your readers. Too many times do bloggers give links to pages that benefit themselves over their readers.

Secondly, you reduce the number of links that leave your blog. This can help boost your PageRank in the next update. Why bother giving a link to Google Adsense? They really dont need the PageRank as much as you do.

Thirdly, if they're affiliate links or partnerships that are no longer of use to you, you increase the chance of losing a customer. If you don't have an affiliate program in your money making plans then you're best to stop giving them traffic and PageRank. If you really feel you need to keep a link up for relevancy, then at least add the nofollow attribute (look it up) to it.

Do you even look at your old articles? Have you ever thought of spring cleaning your website in these ways, or is this a calling? Share your thoughts with us.

How I Plan on Making Money With Facebook

Just a note: I have gone to China for a business internship, and won't be back until mid August. With me luck! I am fairly sure that I will not be able to access my blog while I am over there - blogs are for the most part banned.

At first glimpse Facebook appears to be a tough place to access users – after all, the only information Facebook provides about their users is whatever users are willing to give up – which often is as little as possible. Over the past year, Facebook has continued to develop their application platform which has been an effective way for advertisers and users to click.

However, if you’re reading my blog, you’re probably not in dire need of basic marketing tips. If you have the money it is entirely possible that Facebook will do most of the marketing work for you – they know their website best. As I have found, it is entirely possible to market on Facebook with no money and little knowledge of who your customers are.

These tactics may not be entirely effective, but they are worth a try. I will also say that the tactics I am trying with Facebook are in a moral grey area.

I have noticed, in discussion with friends of mine who use the service, that an overwhelming amount of men randomly add women. They simply flock to the search feature to find attractive women and add, then message them. Therefore, I see no fault in taking advantage of this as an invitation to be advertised to.

If you were to create a facebook account with an attractive – but believable display picture, and join a few networks, you should be able to have several people add you every week. If you make several of these accounts, you will have an even larger and ever increasing pile of contacts.

Unlike email, people who are contacted over facebook read everything sent to them. I am going to experiment, once I have my lists in place, of trying to refer my ‘contacts’ to websites using affiliate links, and see what happens. This is just a theory at the moment, but I like the fact that it’s a free of investment method of creating a list of people to advertise to.

According to many marketers who have tried to use Facebook’s advertising platform, it isn’t the most rewarding, and only works as a way to build an identity as a company. With the potential Facebook has, I’m going to try something new.

I will keep you all posted if it does or does not work – and I’d love to hear what you think.